his guarantee to replace all stock found untrue, for five
years of irreplaceable time has passed. When you have spent time, hope,
and expectation as well as money, looking for results which do not come,
your disappointment is out of all proportion to your financial loss, be
that never so great. In the best-managed nurseries there will be
mistakes, but the better the management the fewer the mistakes. Pay good
prices for young trees, and demand the best. There is no economy in
cheap stock, and the sooner the farmer or fruit-grower comprehends this
fact, the better it will be for him. I ordered trees of three years'
growth from the bud,--this would mean four-year-old roots. Perhaps it
would have been as well to buy smaller ones (many wise people have told
me so), but I was in such a hurry! I wanted to pick apples from these
trees at the first possible moment. I argued that a sturdy
three-year-old would have an advantage over its neighbor that was only
two. However small this advantage, I wanted it in my business--my
business being to make a profitable farm in quick time. The ten acres of
the home lot were to be planted with three hundred Yellow Transparent,
three hundred Duchess of Oldenburg, and one hundred mixed varieties for
home use. I selected the Transparent and the Duchess on account of their
disposition to bear early, and because they are good sellers in a near
market, and because a fruit-wise friend was making money from an
eight-year-old orchard of three thousand of these trees, and advised me
not to neglect them.

My order called for thirty-four hundred three-year-old apple trees of
the highest grade, to be delivered in good condition on the platform at
Exeter for the lump sum of $550. The agreement had been made in August,
and the trees were to be delivered as near the 20th of October as
practicable. Apple trees comprised my entire planting for the autumn of
1895. I wanted to do much other work in that line, but it had to be left
for a more convenient season. Hundreds of fruit trees, shade trees, and
shrubs have since been planted at Four Oaks, but this first setting of
thirty-four hundred apple trees was the most important as well as the
most urgent.

The orchard was to be a prominent feature in the factory I was building,
and as it would be slower in coming to perfection than any other part,
it was wise to start it betimes. I have kicked myself black and blue for
neglecting to plant an orchard ten years ear