sitancy in the purchase: they are able to pay. Hence no resource of
art or skill is left unpractised to minister to a craving appetite that
yields a reward so golden. One producer erects hot-houses, into which he
crowds the plants that otherwise would be hybernating, and, creating an
artificial summer, stimulates the strawberry into bloom, then into
fruit, even in the depth of winter the ripened berries are seen at some
of the most celebrated fruit-stores. They command fabulous prices,--a
spoonful of them readily bringing a dollar, without the demand being
supplied. The rich always have money to spend; and though the world is
never without its poor, yet it seems also to be never without an
abundance of those who have more than they can wisely dispose of. This
branch of horticulture must be profitable, as it is rapidly extending in
the neighborhood of all our large cities. These hot-house fruits are the
earliest in the market.

Other growers move off to a warmer climate, within one or two days' ride
of the great city by railroad, and, by help of hotter suns, crowd their
half-ripened fruits into Northern markets nearly a month in advance of
local cultivators. Only those varieties being grown which are naturally
earlier than all others, they blush into redness while ours have
scarcely reached their full size. Taken from the vines in an unripe
condition, they are crisp and firm, and the fast express-train whirls
them over hundreds of miles, the ripening process, as well as the
decaying one, going on meanwhile. It is costly transportation to the
growers, but the impatient public pay with readiness a price so
extravagant as to make for these wholesale pioneers a stupendous profit.
Thus the warm alluvial lands encircling Norfolk fill the markets from
Baltimore to Boston with the earliest fruit. It is unripe, and deficient
in the full flavor of the strawberry; but what care the wealthy public
for that? It is the first in market,--they have been a year without
it,--it has somewhat of the genuine aroma,--and, ripe or unripe, they
cannot refrain. Great sums are annually realized by these earliest
caterers for the public palate. The hot-house process is comparatively a
retail operation; but this traffic reaches to the dignity of a great
industrial enterprise, employing hundreds of hands, pouring ample
freightage into the coffers of express-companies, and enriching the men
by whom it is conducted. It is exclusively the offspring of N