oung orchards will bring me
at least $5 a year for each tree; and if I round out my expectancy (as
the life-insurance people figure it), I may see them do much better. In
the interim the day of small things must not be despised. In our climate
the Yellow Transparent and the Duchess do not ripen until early
September, and I was therefore at home in time to gather and market the
little crop from my six hundred trees. The apples were carefully picked,
for they do not bear handling well, and the perfect ones were placed in
half-bushel boxes and sent to my city grocer. Not one defective apple
was packed, for I was determined that the Four Oaks stencil should be as
favorably known for fruit as for other products.

The grocer allowed me fifty cents a box. "The market is glutted with
apples, but not your kind," said he. "Can you send more?" I could not
send more, for my young trees had done their best in producing
ninety-six boxes of perfect fruit. Boxes and transportation came to ten
cents for each box, and I received $38 for my first shipment of fruit.

I cannot remember any small sum of money that ever pleased me
more,--except the $28 which I earned by seven months of labor in my
fourteenth year; for it was "first fruits" of the last of our
interlacing industries.

Thirty-eight dollars divided among my trees would give one cent to each;
but four years later these orchards gave net returns of ninety cents for
each tree, and in four years from now they will bring more than twice
that amount. At twelve years of age they will bring an annual income of
$3 each, and this income will steadily increase for ten or fifteen
years. At the time of writing, February, 1903, they are good for $1 a
year, which is five per cent of $20.

Would I take $20 apiece for these trees? Not much, though that would
mean $70,000. I do not know where I could place $70,000 so that it
would pay five per cent this year, six per cent next year, and twenty
per cent eight or ten years from now. Of course, $70,000 would be an
exorbitant price to pay for an orchard like mine; but it must be
remembered that I am old and cannot wait for trees to grow.

If a man will buy land at $50 or $60 an acre, plant it to apple trees
(not less than sixty-five to the acre), and bring these trees to an age
when they will produce fruit to the value of $1.50 each, they will not
have cost more than $1.50 per tree for the land, the trees, and the
labor.

I am too old to begin