Waterbury evening Democrat., 1890-03-11

7, nish gratis for future use. Of peach pus .sni apple and pear seeds the care 1 full housewife who presided over John i Par on's shanty had brought a supply l from the States.
 i Grare-cuttings could be more easily obtained. More than century Lefore the Jesuit pr ests who penetrated up- ward from Mexico had planted grape vines brought from Spain, and these, crossel, perhaps, with other varieties brought from the States, and favored by the ad ptibility of the climate, pro- duced fruit far excelling anything which the Atlantic States eau boast of. And so wlel spring came again and the ram ceased, there was quite the ap- pearance of living in the vicinity of the Parsons shanty. Some twenty acres of the land had been broken, D garden , planted, and many of it's products were lifting their heads to tho sunlight; a half-hundred fruit trees and hundred grape-vines had put forth their leaves, and were ready to drink in the sunshine i and grow And they grew. Grew so fast that one could almost fancy 1 he saw them grow and stretch them | selves.
 | It has been said that the only thing which ever distanced a California | the business of growing is the bean-vine of Jack the Giant-Killer, known to our childhood days; the one that Jack undertook to climb to the top of, but which grew faster than he could climb, and so carrying him With it, finally reached clear up to the giants castle.
 And such clusters of fruit as hang dependent upon their stems, and grow and ripen in the long sunny days of September and October, when not cloud mars the blue of the sky for weeks and weeks: clusters that look like pure globes of clear crystal; or that turn purple and amber-colored where they hang among tie broad, velvety leaves that seem as if conscious of the l beauty of the picture which they help to make; and which turn themselves side ways upon their long stems, now hid ing, now disclosing the fruit in their midst.
 The California grapes shipped by re- frigerator cars, and exposed for sale at the fruit stands in all our Eastern cities, and which attract such universal at- tent on, give but a poor idea of Cali l fornia grapes when p@,cked and eaten standing beneath the vine in California, or sitting at ease at your own table or that of a fir end, with the sea or the mountains in sight through the open 1 w ndow.
 Only the tougher skinned or less luscious of the fruit' of all kinds will bear such long shiprin.r. The finer and | lufclcr and more luscious varieties of each must be eaten where they are grown, or be sent to a not distant mar ket.
 California plums arc wrapped in tis- sue paper and sent cast boxed up like oranges from Florida or the West Indies, and sold "a nickel apiece, or three for a dilne," to people who buy them as curiosity, or a very rare treat. At home in California the children eat them as children eat apples in New England, and the housewife drops them into liquid sugar and takes them out great globes of pearl with centcrs of amethyst. Or she cuts them in halves, and, removing the pit, lets them dry in the sun. and stores them away in sacks and boxes just as she does figs and grapes; only that these latter are packed down hard when but little more than half dried, and before the rich juices have crystaliZed into sugar; and which, eaten as freely as bread is eaten, ilushes the veins with the rich blood that crimsons the cheeks of chi dren and grown people alike ill this land of fruits and flowers; this land of mount ain ranges and sea-washed shores; of valleys as rich in the elem nts of agri- cultural wealth as it's hillsides are with precious ores this land that should bear people as free as the breeze that floats in upon them laden with healing balm from the salt sea waves to find not f1eemen, but. delving in mines and upon leagues and leagues of the richest farming lands upon the contlnent-s , million ser(s.
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