through our
own telegraph wires, and was left free to attend to many things which
interested me--among others, the making of paths, the planting of
trees, and the setting out of little forests of seedlings.

Of all the profitable things which develop quickly under the hand, I
have thought my young nurseries show the greatest yield. We keep a set
of account books for each place, and I was amazed not long ago at the
increase in value that a few years make in growing things, when we
came to remove some young trees from Westchester County to Lakewood,
New Jersey. We plant our young trees, especially evergreens, by the
thousand--I think we have put in as many as ten thousand at once, and
let them develop, to be used later in some of our planting schemes. If
we transfer young trees from Pocantico to our home in Lakewood, we
charge one place and credit the other for these trees at the market
rate. We are our own best customers, and we make a small fortune out
of ourselves by selling to our New Jersey place at $1.50 or $2.00
each, trees which originally cost us only five or ten cents at
Pocantico.

In nursery stock, as in other things, the advantage of doing things on
a large scale reveals itself. The pleasure and satisfaction of saving
and moving large trees--trees, say, from ten to twenty inches in
diameter, or even more in some cases--has been for years a source of
great interest. We build our movers ourselves, and work with our own
men, and it is truly surprising what liberties you can take with
trees, if you once learn how to handle these monsters. We have moved
trees ninety feet high, and many seventy or eighty feet. And they
naturally are by no means young. At one time or another we have tried
almost all kinds of trees, including some which the authorities said
could not be moved with success. Perhaps the most daring experiments
were with horse-chestnuts. We took up large trees, transported them
considerable distances, some of them after they were actually in
flower, all at a cost of twenty dollars per tree, and lost very few.
We were so successful that we became rather reckless, trying
experiments out of season, but when we worked on plans we had already
tried, our results were remarkably satisfactory.

Taking our experiences in many hundreds of trees of various kinds in
and out of season, and including the time when we were learning the
art, our total loss has been something less than 10 per cent.,
probably more ne