"About two gallons, take one year with another. The olives, however, come off after the grain harvest and the vintage are over, when there is not much else to do."
"Taking out the big tree, that wouldn't be more than fifteen dollars to an acre every other year, according to the number of trees you've got here, making no allowance for blight and bad years. Then you've no straw, nothing left but the oil, and that won't keep a great while; if you don't sell it, cattle can't eat it. I'd rather raise corn on a burn, where I can get a crop worth five times as much, that I can eat, sell, or that my cattle will fat on, will keep, and then have a crop of fodder left after all is done. Do they ever fail of a crop in the bearing years?"
"Yes, they sometimes blight and cast their fruit."
"I should call it rather small business to wait twelve years for a tree to bear at all, then twenty-five or thirty more for it to bear full; after all, to bear only every other year; sometimes blight, and then get only six dollars from the very largest trees. I shouldn't think they'd be worth the picking up."
"Not worth the picking up!" cried Gabriel in astonishment; "olives not worth picking up? They bring much money to the poor man."
"How much are a man's wages here?"
"Twenty sous (cents) a day, a woman's, ten, to work in the field."
"Why, in America a man working on the land in harvest gets six or nine francs, and found."
"Mon Dieu!" screamed Gabriel; "my wife, my children, hear that. Felix Bertault, my neighbor," he shouted to a peasant, who was a short distance away pruning vines, but, having heard the loud talking and witnessed the excited gestures caused by Walter's words, stood gaping with open mouth, and pruning-hook in hand.
"Step this way," said Gabriel, "and listen to what this young citizen is saying—that in America a laboring man gets nine francs, and his victuals besides."