For some years Luther took one odd job after another until he saved enough to buy a small piece of ground. Then he was soon raising plants and making new varieties. He read and studied and tried experiments. Sometimes he failed, and even when he succeeded there was a good deal of fun made of him. Some people thought Luther Burbank was crazy. It seemed such an odd thing for a man to think of doing—making a fruit or a flower that had not been heard of or dreamed of before! But he did not pay any heed to all this sneering. He worked harder than ever. And before long, the first new plants were in great demand, so that by selling them he got money to buy more land. To-day some of the largest orchards in California are growing from one of Luther Burbank's experiments. And our country is millions of dollars richer from his new kinds of plums, potatoes, and prunes.
Mr. Burbank bought acres of land, hired armies of workmen, denied himself pleasures and visitors, and did not mind how tired he was, so long as old plants were being made better, or new plants were being created. Pretty soon letters began to come from Russia, France, Japan, England, South America, and Africa, asking for some Burbank plants and some Burbank advice as to their care.
Mr. Burbank has made more new forms of plant life than any other man. He has worked on two thousand, five hundred species of plants. Besides making flowers more beautiful and of sweeter fragrance, he has done wonders with the cactus plants that grow on prairies. Once all these plants were covered with thorns and prickles, so that the cattle who bit into them rushed away with bleeding mouths, feeling much the same as we should if we put our teeth into a stalk of celery and bit on to fish-hooks and needles. Well, Mr. Burbank has changed all that. The fruit of some of his cactus plants is almost as sweet as oranges; the thorns are all gone so that the stalks are fine food for cattle; some of the leaves make good pickles or greens; and the small plants are used for hedges. So the plants that were in old times a pest and nuisance are to-day, thanks to Mr. Burbank, a comfort to the world.
Luther Burbank is a handsome, courteous gentleman, fond of fun, of young people and children, but you can see how busy he has been in the odd science of making new plants and trees, and as he has plans for a great many more, you will also understand why he really has to have those signs put up around his farm at Santa Rosa.
EDWARD ALEXANDER MACDOWELL
On a lovely Sunday morning, some years ago, when all the sweet June smells came in through the open church window, an old man with silvery white hair played such a soft, entrancing little air on the organ, as the ushers took the weekly offering, that the listeners held their breath. "What is it?" they whispered. "What is the dainty thing called?" They asked the organist at the close of the service, and he answered: "That was MacDowell's 'To a Wild Rose'—and MacDowell is a composer of whom America may well be proud."
Edward MacDowell was born in New York. He had his first piano lessons when he was eight years old. But as soon as he had learned the notes, his mother noticed that it was not exercises that he played, but merry, rollicking airs. When she asked him where he found them, he replied: "In my head and heart." He was even then composing music of his own. His mother did not run to the neighbors at once, crying "My son is a genius." Instead of that she thought: "Dear me, I am afraid Edward will be a Jack-of-all-trades and good at none, for he writes beautiful stories and poems and draws exact likenesses of people. What in the world shall we do with him?"
All his music teachers said it would be wicked not to keep him at the piano. But that was easier said than done. When, at the age of fifteen, he went with his mother to Paris, he passed fine examinations for entrance to the French Conservatory and learned the French language in no time, so as to understand the teachers and lecturers. But he was still apt to forget that he went to his classes to listen and spent much time sketching the faces of teacher or pupils on the margin of his note-book. MacDowell was busy one day, over a picture of a teacher who had a large, queerly shaped nose, when the teacher, seeing that the boy was paying no attention to the lesson, darted to his seat and seized the sketch. MacDowell was frightened and imagined he would be punished. But the teacher was not a bit angry when he saw how true the lines were. He asked to keep the paper and a few days later called on Mrs. MacDowell. "Madam," he said, "I have shown the picture your son drew of me to an artist of the School of Fine Arts, and this gentleman is so sure Edward is meant for a portrait painter that he offers to pay all his expenses for three years and to give him lessons free of charge." This was a grand chance for a poor boy. Mrs. MacDowell did not want to make any mistake. She looked at the teacher a minute and asked: "What would you do?"