Part 11

The admiration of good materials

Not even yet am I done with this plain problem of the daily fare. The very fact that it is daily--thrice daily--and that it enters so much into the thought and effort of every one of us, makes it a subject of the deepest concern from every point of view. The aspect of the case that I am now to reassert is the effect of much of our food preparation in removing us from a knowledge of the good raw materials that come out of the abounding earth.

Let us stop to admire an apple. I see a committee of the old worthies in some fruit-show going slowly and discriminatingly among the plates of fruits, discussing the shapes and colors and sizes, catching the fragrance, debating the origins and the histories, and testing them with the utmost precaution and deliberation; and I follow to hear their judgment.

This kind of apple is very perfect in spherical form, deeply cut at the stem, well ridged at the shallow crater, beautifully splashed and streaked with carmine-red on a yellowish green under-color, finely flecked with dots, slightly russet on the shaded side, apparently a good keeper; its texture is fine-grained and uniform, flavor mildly subacid, the quality good to very good; if the tree is hardy and productive, this variety is to be recommended to the amateur for further trial! The next sample is somewhat elongated in form, rather below the average in color, the stem very long and well set and indicating a fruit that does not readily drop in windstorms, the texture exceedingly melting but the flavor slightly lacking in character and therefore rendering it of doubtful value for further test. Another sample lacks decidedly in quality, as judged by the specimens on the table, and the exhibitor is respectfully recommended to withdraw it from future exhibitions; another kind has a very pronounced aromatic odor, which will commend it to persons desiring to grow a choice collection of interesting fruits; still another is of good size, very firm and solid, of uniform red color, slightly oblate and therefore lending itself to easy packing, quality fair to good, and if the tree bears such uniform samples as those shown on the table it apparently gives promise of some usefulness as a market sort. My older friends, if they have something of the feeling of the pomologist, can construct the remainder of the picture.

In physical perfectness of form and texture and color, there is nothing in all the world that exceeds a well-grown fruit. Let it lie in the palm of your hand. Close your fingers slowly about it. Feel its firm or soft and modelled surface. Put it against your cheek, and inhale its fragrance. Trace its neutral under-colors, and follow its stripes and mark its dots. If an apple, trace the eye that lies in a moulded basin. Note its stem, how it stands firmly in its cavity, and let your imagination run back to the tree from which, when finally mature, it parted freely. This apple is not only the product of your labor, but it holds the essence of the year and it is in itself a thing of exquisite beauty. There is no other rondure and no other fragrance like this.

I am convinced that we need much to cultivate this appreciation of the physical perfectness of the fruits that we grow. We cannot afford to lose this note from our lives, for this may contribute a good part of our satisfaction of being in the world. The discriminating appreciation that one applies to a picture or a piece of sculpture may be equally applied to any fruit that grows on the commonest tree or bush in our field or to any animal that stands on a green pasture. It is no doubt a mark of a well-tempered mind that it can understand the significance of the forms in fruits and plants and animals and apply it in the work of the day.

I sometimes think that the rise of the culinary arts is banishing this fine old appreciation of fruits in their natural forms. There are so many ways of canning and preserving and evaporating and extracting the juices, so many disguises and so much fabrication, that the fruit is lost in the process. The tin-can and the bottle seem to have put an insuperable barrier between us and nature, and it is difficult for us to get back to a good munch of real apples under a tree or by the fireside. The difficulty is all the greater in our congested city life where orchards and trees are only a vacant memory or stories told to the young, and where the space in the larder is so small that apples must be purchased by the quart. The eating of good apples out of hand seems to be almost a lost art. Only the most indestructible kinds, along with leather-skinned oranges and withered bananas, seem to be purchasable in the market. The discriminating apple-eater in the Old World sends to a grower for samples of the kinds that he grows; and after the inquirer has tested them in the family, and discussed them, he orders his winter supply. The American leaves the matter to the cook and she orders plain apples; and she gets them.

I wonder whether in time the perfection of fabrication will not reach such a point that some fruits will be known to the great public only by the picture on the package or on the bottle. Every process that removes us one step farther from the earth is a distinct loss to the people, and yet we are rapidly coming into the habit of taking all things at second hand. My objection to the wine of the grape is not so much a question of abstinence as of the fact that I find no particular satisfaction in the shape and texture of a bottle.

If one has a sensitive appreciation of the beauty in form and color and modelling of the common fruits, he will find his interest gradually extending to other products. Some time ago I visited Hood River Valley in company with a rugged potato-grower from the Rocky Mountains. We were amazed at the wonderful scenery, and captivated by the beauty of the fruits. In one orchard the owner showed us with much satisfaction a brace of apples of perfect form and glowing colors. When the grower had properly expounded the marvels of Hood River apples, which he said were the finest in the world, my friend thrust his hand into his pocket and pulled out a potato, and said to the man: "Why is not that just as handsome as a Hood River apple?" And sure enough it was. For twenty-five years this grower had been raising and selecting the old Peachblow potato, until he had a form much more perfect than the old Peachblow ever was, with a uniform delicate pink skin, smooth surface, comely shape, and medium size, and with eyes very small and scarcely sunken; and my Hood River friend admitted that a potato as well as an apple may be handsome and satisfying to the hand and to the eye, and well worth carrying in one's pocket. But this was a high-bred potato, and not one of the common lot.

This episode of the potato allows me another opportunity to enforce my contention that we lose the fruit or the vegetable in the processes of cookery. The customary practice of "mashing" potatoes takes all the individuality out of the product, and the result is mostly so much starch. There is an important dietary side to this. Cut a thin slice across a potato and hold it to the light. Note the interior undifferentiated mass, and then the thick band of rind surrounding it. The potato flavor and a large part of the nutriment lie in this exterior. We slice this part away and fry, boil, or otherwise fuss up the remainder. When we mash it, we go still farther and break down the potato texture; and in the modern method we squeeze and strain it till we eliminate every part of the potato, leaving only a pasty mass, which, in my estimation, is not fit to eat. The potato should be cooked with the rind on, if it is a good potato, and if it is necessary to remove the outer skin the process should be performed after the cooking. The most toothsome part of the potato is in these outer portions, if the tuber is well grown and handled. We have so sophisticated the potato in the modern disguised cookery that we often practically ruin it as an article of food, and we have bred a race of people that sees nothing to admire in a good and well-grown potato tuber.

I now wish to take an excursion from the potato to the pumpkin. In all the range of vegetable products, I doubt whether there is a more perfect example of pleasing form, fine modelling, attractive texture and color, and more bracing odor, than in a well-grown and ripe field pumpkin. Place a pumpkin on your table; run your fingers down its smooth grooves; trace the furrows to the poles; take note of its form; absorb its rich color; get the tang of its fragrance. The roughness and ruggedness of its leaves, the sharp-angled stem strongly set, make a foil that a sculptor cannot improve. Then wonder how this marvellous thing was born out of your garden soil through the medium of one small strand of a succulent stem.

We all recognize the appeal of a bouquet of flowers, but we are unaware that we may have a bouquet of fruits. We have given little attention to arranging them, or any study of the kinds that consort well together, nor have we receptacles in which effectively to display them. Yet, apples and oranges and plums and grapes and nuts, and good melons and cucumbers and peppers and carrots and onions, may be arranged into the most artistic and satisfying combinations.

I would fall short of my obligation if I were to stop with the fruit of the tree and say nothing about the tree or the plant itself. In our haste for lawn trees of new kinds and from the uttermost parts, we forget that a fruit-tree is ornamental and that it provides acceptable shade. A full-grown apple-tree or pear-tree is one of the most individual and picturesque of trees. The foliage is good, the blossoms as handsome as those of fancy imported things, the fruits always interesting, and the tree is reliable. Nothing is more interesting than an orange tree, in the regions where it grows, with its shining and evergreen leaves and its continuing flowers and fruits. The practice of planting apples and pears and sweet cherries, and other fruit and nut trees, for shade and adornment is much to be commended in certain places.

But the point I wish specially to urge in this connection is the value of many kinds of fruit-trees in real landscape work. We think of these trees as single or separate specimens, but they may be used with good result in mass planting, when it is desired to produce a given effect in a large area or in one division of a property. I do not know that any one has worked out full plans for the combining of fruit-trees, nuts, and berry-bearing plants into good treatments, but it is much to be desired that this shall be done. Any of you can picture a sweep of countryside planted to these things that would be not only novel and striking, but at the same time conformable to the best traditions of artistic rendering.

I think it should be a fundamental purpose in our educational plans to acquaint the people with the common resources of the region, and particularly with those materials on which we subsist. If this is accepted, then we cannot deprive our parks, highways, and school grounds of the trees that bear the staple fruits. It is worth while to have an intellectual interest in a fruit-tree. I know a fruit-grower who secures many prizes for his apples and his pears; when he secures a blue ribbon, he ties it on the tree that bore the fruit.

The admiration of a good domestic animal is much to be desired. It develops a most responsible attitude in the man or the woman. I have observed a peculiar charm in the breeders of these wonderful animals, a certain poise and masterfulness and breadth of sympathy. To admire a good horse and to know just why he admires him is a great resource to any man, as also to feel the responsibility for the care and health of any flock or herd. Fowls, pigs, sheep on their pastures, cows, mules, all perfect of their kind, all sensitive, all of them marvellous in their forms and powers,--verily these are good to know.

If the raw materials grow out of the holy earth, then a man should have pride in producing them, and also in handling them. As a man thinketh of his materials, so doth he profit in the use of them. He builds them into himself. There is a wide-spread feeling that in some way these materials reflect themselves in a man's bearing. One type of man grows out of the handling of rocks, another out of the handling of fishes, another out of the growing of the products from the good earth. All irreverence in the handling of these materials that come out of the earth's bounty, and all waste and poor workmanship, make for a low spiritual expression.

The farmer specially should be proud of his materials, he is so close to the sources and so hard against the backgrounds. Moreover, he cannot conceal his materials. He cannot lock up his farm or disguise his crops. He lives on his farm, and visibly with his products. The architect does not live in the houses and temples he builds. The engineer does not live on his bridge. The miner does not live in his mine. Even the sailor has his home away from his ship. But the farmer cannot separate himself from his works. Every bushel of buckwheat and every barrel of apples and every bale of cotton bears his name; the beef that he takes to market, the sheep that he herds on his pastures, the horse that he drives,--these are his products and they carry his name. He should have the same pride in these--his productions--as another who builds a machine, or another who writes a book about them. The admiration of a field of hay, of a cow producing milk, of a shapely and fragrant head of cabbage, is a great force for good.

It would mean much if we could celebrate the raw materials and the products. Particularly is it good to celebrate the yearly bounty. The Puritans recognized their immediate dependence on the products of the ground, and their celebration was connected with religion. I should be sorry if our celebrations were to be wholly secular.

We have been much given to the display of fabricated materials,--of the products of looms, lathes, foundries, and many factories of skill. We also exhibit the agricultural produce, but largely in a crass and rude way to display bulk and to win prizes. We now begin to arrange our exhibitions for color effect, comparison, and educational influence. But we do not justly understand the natural products when we confine them to formal exhibitions. They must be incorporated into many celebrations, expressing therein the earth's bounty and our appreciation of it. The usual and common products, domesticated and wild, should be gathered in these occasions, and not for competition or for prize awards or even for display, but for their intrinsic qualities. An apple day or an apple sabbath would teach the people to express their gratitude for apples. The moral obligation to grow good apples, to handle them honestly, to treat the soil and the trees fairly and reverently, could be developed as a living practical philosophy into the working-days of an apple-growing people. The technical knowledge we now possess requires the moral support of a stimulated public appreciation to make it a thoroughly effective force.

Many of the products and crops lend themselves well to this kind of admiration, and all of them should awaken gratitude and reverence. Sermons and teaching may issue from them. Nor is it necessary that this gratitude be expressed only in collected materials, or that all preaching and all teaching shall be indoors. The best understanding of our relations to the earth will be possible when we learn how to apply our devotions in the open places.

The keeping of the beautiful earth

The proper care-taking of the earth lies not alone in maintaining its fertility or in safeguarding its products. The lines of beauty that appeal to the eye and the charm that satisfies the five senses are in our keeping.

The natural landscape is always interesting and it is satisfying. The physical universe is the source of art. We know no other form and color than that which we see in nature or derive from it. If art is true to its theme, it is one expression of morals. If it is a moral obligation to express the art-sense in painting and sculpture and literature and music, so is it an equal obligation to express it in good landscape.

Of the first importance is it that the race keep its artistic backgrounds, and not alone for the few who may travel far and near and who may pause deliberately, but also for those more numerous folk who must remain with the daily toil and catch the far look only as they labor. To put the best expression of any landscape into the consciousness of one's day's work is more to be desired than much riches. When we complete our conquest, there will be no unseemly landscapes.

The abundance of violated landscapes is proof that we have not yet mastered. The farmer does not have full command of his situation until the landscape is a part of his farming. Farms may be units in well-developed and pleasing landscapes, beautiful in their combinations with other farms and appropriate to their setting as well as attractive in themselves.

No one has a moral right to contribute unsightly factory premises or a forbidding commercial establishment to any community. The lines of utility and efficiency ought also to be the lines of beauty; and it is due every worker to have a good landscape to look upon, even though its area be very constricted. To produce bushels of wheat and marvels of machinery, to maintain devastating military establishments, do not comprise the sum of conquest. The backgrounds must be kept.

If moral strength comes from good and sufficient scenery, so does the preservation of it become a social duty. It is much more than a civic obligation. But the resources of the earth must be available to man for his use and this necessarily means a modification of the original scenery. Some pieces and kinds of scenery are above all economic use and should be kept wholly in the natural state. Much of it may yield to modification if he takes good care to preserve its essential features. Unfortunately, the engineer seems not often to be trained in the values of scenery and he is likely to despoil a landscape or at least to leave it raw and unfinished.