ALL VISITORS ARE LIMITED
TO FIVE MINUTES EACH UNLESS
BY SPECIAL APPOINTMENT
And during the six busiest months of the year, from April to October, other signs tell that it will cost ten dollars to stay one hour. These signs are not put up because Mr. Burbank is cross or rude, but because these strange new plants have to be watched as carefully as tiny babies. He can't leave them for visitors.
Luther Burbank was born in Lancaster, Massachusetts. When he was a baby in his cradle, his mother and sisters found that nothing made him dimple and crow with delight like a flower. They noticed, too, that he never crushed a flower, and once, when a petal fell off a flower he was holding, he tried for hours with his tiny fingers to put it back in place. And when he was big enough to run about the house and yard, instead of carrying a toy or a dog or cat in his arms, he was usually hugging a potted plant of some kind, for as people saw his great love for such things, they were on the lookout for cunning plants for the dear little Burbank boy.
One day Luther was trudging across the yard, clasping a small lobster-cactus in an earthen pot, when he stumbled and fell, breaking the pot and plant. He cried for days over the accident.
At school, Luther was a delight to his teachers. There were few black marks against his name. He liked all his lessons, but the books that told him about birds, trees, and flowers pleased him most.
When Luther was old enough to go to Leicester Academy, he had for his dearest chum a boy cousin who knew Agassiz, and who through him became interested in science. This boy wanted to study about rocks and caves, rivers and fish, while Luther watched the birds that perched on the rocks and the trees that grew near the rivers. But the two spent many weeks tramping over the country together.
Luther worked several summers in a factory near his home. He was quick to understand machinery and invented a machine that saved the manager of the factory a great deal of money, for it would do the work of six men. Luther's family and friends were sure he would be an inventor. But he himself wanted to raise flowers.
Luther saved a little money and started a vegetable garden. He tried experiments with the potato plants until he raised an entirely different kind than had ever grown before. Of course this made him want to experiment with other plants, and he stayed in the hot sun so much looking after them that he had a bad sunstroke. This led to his going to a climate where he might live outdoors during more months of the year, and where he would not be apt to have such attacks.
When Luther reached California, he had only a few dollars, rather poor health, and was among strangers. He tried to get work on farms or orchards, because he wanted to experiment with vines and vegetables. But if he got work, it was usually for only a few days at a time. Finally he was obliged to work on a chicken ranch, where the only place for him to sleep was in one of the chicken coops. The pay was small, and he did not have as much or as good food as some pet dogs get. But all the time he was saying to himself: "If I can have patience, I shall yet get a farm of my own."
By and by he was hired to look after a small nursery (this is what a big plantation of trees is called). He would have been perfectly happy there if sleeping in a damp room had not given him a fever. He was poor, sick, and almost alone, but not quite, for a very poor woman, who had only the milk of one cow to sell, found him one day lying on a bed of straw, and ever after that insisted on his drinking a pint of her milk each day. He declared that this milk saved his life.