The Northern Pacific farmer. [volume] (Wadena, Minn.) 1878-1885, 1882-05-25

No ills that Heaven may decree
Our knitted souls can separate,
o heart beloved!
BURDETTE'S ORCHARD.
The Fatal Effects Wrought 10y his
Deadly Plums.
Burlington Hawkeye. -
While the Jester was travelling recent
ly, nurseryman got on tho train. Why
he should have selected the jester as a
man pining away for Norwegian stock
pear-trce or all assortment of early green
Lombardy apple scions, no one can tell;
but he did; and he talked tree to that
patient child of sorrow for fifty-two miles.
II have tried this pear,'' the Jester said,
his sad face lighting up with a look of
pleased recognition as the tree man
showed him colored Autograph OF a
pear as big as football. with neck like
a champagne bottle, golden yellow on
one side, scarlet-streaked on the other.
II have tried this pear. I planted four
of these Hibernian Dutch-cheeked mon
golia tricolors ten years ago."
"She's the daisy" the tree man said !;
"didn't they do splendidly?"
Beautifully" said the Jester. :" All
died the first year, and never had a
particle of trouble with them"
Then the tree man showed him a picture
of an Oliver Gilsey open-stone hybrid
peach (Americanus brandificarius). 1t
was larger-in the lithograph-thana tur-
nip, with down on it like the mustache of
a college boy in the junior year, and it
was rose-tinted like the deep-set heart of
sad-sounding curled sea-shell. On the
opposite page apicture Of the tree showed
up like century old oak, gnarled, and
rugged, and hardy as the granite cliff that
from the mountain side frowned on the
shadOwy vale below.
Loud cheers from the man on the
wood-box, and cries from the passengers
Of ssGo on!' and "More."]
ooh, yes" the Jester said, IL know
that fruit. | have tried that brand of
peach. It would have done we'll, no
doubt, had we not planted the trees in
the onion bed The onions came up
and chokcd all the trees but one. 1t
came up and bore peaches, two of them.
Not just exactly like that picture. One of
them looked like a wart on a gum
10y, O1lly IL WIS llstIucI, anu LllC llfilI
stuck out like bristles and quilts. The
this, I suppose, only the stone grew on
the outside. don't want any fruit trees
this spring, anyhow"
"But-" began the nursery man.
II never see a beautiful Autograph of a
fruit tree, crowned and gemned with lus-
cio,1s fruit" the Jester went on, with
out being reminded Of an eminent sue
cess [ made with plums. l owned a
beautiful home surrounded with charm
ing grounds, and fruit trees was one of
my pastimes. A tree man came along
one year, and sold me q plum tree. l
had had little success with plum trees, on
account of the rapacious and never salts
fed curculio. But the tree man assured
me the curculio would never touch this
particularly beautiful variety; the Alonzo
du Belvidere, or Light Of the Harcm-
scarum. bought the tree. It grew as
never plum tree grew before; great
swelling mass Of foliage that wooed the
sunbealns to play with it's dancing shad-
ows. And fruit! Everybody that went
by the homestead sworc to himself there
weren't enough dogs in the COM
monwealth to keep him on the road
way side of that fence week longer.
It never failed, not one single
year. Season after season it put forth
blooms until it looked like spring-time
snow bank, and then in the season of it's
fruit it shonc and gloried like a royal
purple sunset in the back garden. One
day Smith praised the tree, and gave
him of it's fruit. He bit a piece out of the
plum, and then started home for his gum
1t was only a few steps, but twice before
he got there he forgot what he had
started after. He climbed over into the
foundation of a new house and tried to
die: Then he stopped in a vacant lot,
and. ate the tops off the tar-weeds, to take
the taste out of his mouth. When he got
home he sent for Doctor Miller, and told
him that Jester had poisoned him to get
some money he owed him, and he want
ed him to take down his ante mortem
statement.
"But he lived, and forgave the man
who had filed his young life with bitter
ness, and one day, standing under the
swaying botghs of this deadly upas plum
tree, told him all its woeful history.
How at night the lons-drawn bowls and
walls of tcrror-stricken boys, lying in the
dew-sprinkled grass of the COW pasture,
had filled the night with weird ,,lncanny
horror, and scared all of the neighbors'
dogs, or SO many of them as the walls
would go around, under a barn in the
tree-bordered hollow. How thievish and
road-weary tramps had eaten of this
fruit, had gone off down street shouting
''fire! and had never been seen again.
How one day a sandy pig, three and a
half feet long, had eaten couple Of these
plums that somebody had thrown over
the fence, and then sat down in the dust
of the street, and cried and sobbed with
pain and modification, until the
golden sun went down in
in sea Of roseate splendor in the distant
west. How visitors, friends of the family,
and guests Of the home, had plucked and
bitten plum before they could be warn
ed, and then, with CHASTITY countenances,
tried to look as though they liked it. The
robins shun that tree. The c,lrculio
never went near it. The wondering
crows ofthe air wouldn't look at it. Moth
ing ever touched it except the English
sparrows. They liked it, and grew fat
upon it. Nothing" added the Jester,
nothing that ever grew can kill the En-
glish sparrow"
But the passengers knew that if he
wandered ofon that topic he could never
be silenced, and the man on the woodbox
besouth him to tell the rest about the
plum tree, while the tree man gathered
his Autographs, and got off at cross-road.
He Got What He Wanted.
New York Sun.