they denounced the system of peddling in unmeasured terms.  Now it is just as possible for a tree peddler to be an honest man as it is for the man who grows trees to sell to be honest.  I do not say that all men belonging to either class are honest.  It would be equally absurd to say that all of either class are dishonest.  I despise the quack, the liar, the deceiver in any business, and I have no respect or love for the man who will sell worthless varieties of trees or wrongly named varieties, knowingly.  Honesty here as elsewhere is the best policy.  But here is a fact, as I believe:  It is better to plant an inferior tree than none at all, and I know of neighbors who would go down into their graves without ever planting a tree if some persuasive peddler had not talked it into them to do so, and these same neighbors now have quite respectable orchards.  Here is another fact:  One half the orders sent to nursery-men by farmers during the past twenty years have called for varieties utterly worthless for the localities in which they were to be planted.  And the tree peddler often gratifies the purchaser by pretending to sell to him a sort which he has made up his mind to have because he knows it was good in his old home a thousand miles away.  But the peddler, not having this variety, and knowing that if he did have it it would prove worthless, substitutes a Ben Davis or some other approved variety, and it goes into the ground and in due time produces an abundance of excellent fruit.  In this case the peddler does a really good thing.  If nursery-men will stop propagating everything but varieties adapted to the country and the markets, and many of them are doing this, the tree peddler will be powerless for mischief—­will in fact become a great public benefactor.  But so long as nursery-men will continue to grow and sell worthless varieties, and so long as the people will remain in ignorance regarding adaptability, so long will the dishonest peddler remain an unmitigated nuisance and fraud.  In brief these three things are wanted:  Intelligent and honest nurserymen; orchard planters who either know what varieties are best for them to have, or who are willing to trust the selection to the afore-mentioned intelligent and honest nursery-men; and third, first-class talkers, intelligent as to varieties and methods of culture, who buy only of the intelligent and honest nursery-men, to go through the country and sell trees.  It is unfortunate that it takes so many words to express what I wanted to say, but I am done at last.

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I have got it!  Yes, all the ice I want is now white for the harvest in our “artificial” pond.  It is the only thing that reconciles me to this fierce visit of polar weather.  As soon as a trifle milder wave gets along our way we shall carefully store away sufficient for the year’s use.  By the way, where are the poor deluded woodchucks, muskrats, and Old Settlers, who told us we were to