The potatoes had been dug and sold, or stored in the cellar of the farm-house; the apples from the trees reserved for home use had been gathered, and we were ready for the fall planting.  While waiting for the stock to arrive, we had time to get in all the hay and most of the straw into the forage barn, which was now under roof.

On Saturday, the 26th, word came that sixteen immense boxes had arrived at Exeter for us.  Three teams were sent at once, and each team brought home two boxes.  Three trips were made, and the entire prospective orchard was safely landed.  Monday saw our whole force at work planting trees.  Small stakes had been driven to give the exact centre for each hole, so that the trees, viewed from any direction, would be in straight lines.  Sam, Zeb, and Judson were to dig the holes, putting the surface dirt to the right, and the poor earth to the left; I was to prune the roots and keep tab on the labels; Johnson and Anderson were to set the trees,—­Anderson using a shovel and Johnson his hands, feet, and eyes; while Thompson was to puddle and distribute the trees.  The puddling was easily done.  We sawed an oil barrel in halves, placed these halves on a stone boat, filled them two-thirds full of water, and added a lot of fine clay.  Into this thin mud the roots of each tree were dipped before planting.

My duty was to shorten the roots that were too long, and to cut away the bruised and broken ones.  The top pruning was to be done after the trees were all set and banked.  The stock was fine in every respect,—­fully up to promise.  Watching Johnson set his first tree convinced me that he knew more about planting than I did.  He lined and levelled it; he pawed surface dirt into the hole, and churned the roots up and down; more dirt, and he tamped it; still more dirt, and he tramped it; yet more dirt, and he stamped it until the tree stood like a post; then loose dirt, and he left it.  I was sure Johnson knew his business too well to need advice from a tenderfoot, so I went back to my root pruning.

We were ten days planting these thirty-four hundred trees, but we did it well, and the days were short.  We finished on the 7th of November.  The trees were now to be top pruned.  I told Johnson to cut every tree in the big orchard back to a three-foot stub, unless there was very good reason for leaving a few inches (never more than six), and I turned my back on him and walked away as I said these cruel words.  It seemed a shame to cut these bushy, long-legged, handsome fellows back to dwarfish insignificance and brutish ugliness, but it had to be done.  I wanted stocky, thrifty, low-headed business trees, and there was no other way to get them.  The trees in the lower, or ten-acre, orchard, were not treated so severely.  Their long legs were left, and their bushy tops were only moderately curtailed.  We would try both high and low heading.