THE STORY OF A SEAMSTRESS WHO LAID DOWN HER NEEDLE AND BECAME A STRAWBERRY-GIRL.
WRITTEN BY HERSELF.
CHAPTER IX.
It must be remembered that we were on the same street with our neighbors, the Tetchy family, and that multitudes of their customers passed our gate on their way to the old established strawberry-garden. When a company of new customers came along in search of the Tetchys, some of them would stop at our gate, and, looking through the open lattice-work, would see the strawberries, and, thinking this the right place, would often come into the house and call for a saucer of fruit. Some of these did so while I was engaged in picking, even pushing through into the garden where I was at work. This publicity was a great annoyance to me, especially as my mother increased it by insisting on supplying all the fruit thus called for. Hence the same parties made repeated visits. My mother thought it as important to cultivate customers as to cultivate strawberries. They called for cream,—as all people must have the best of everything; but having no cow, she bought milk as required, and though no doubt extensively diluted before it reached us, yet it seemed to go down with entire satisfaction.
Thus, without ever anticipating it, we fell heirs to a sprinkling of the profitable business which the Tetchys were carrying on: for, as part of the unintended legacy, my mother appropriated their high prices also. She took such interest in this mode of selling our fruit that I began to fear she would really convert our premises into another strawberry-garden. I confess the temptation was strong, because she thereby secured three times the profit that we could obtain at the market. As it was, she realized thirty dollars during the season from these unexpected customers. But not one of us would listen to the project of a strawberry-garden. Jane was, in fact, too proud to entertain the idea of waiting on the crowd of impudent, loafing young men who frequent such places as openings for getting rid of their money; while Fred declared that his sisters should never come down to the condition of waiters at any table but their own. So my mother was overruled, though she insisted that her little experience with a few customers had fully satisfied her that our ill-natured neighbors were making great profits out of the immense retail trade they were doing.
But if our little household was thus harmonious on the strawberry question, the Tetchys were very far from being on good terms with us. They had as great a run that season as ever. Indeed, we heard that their customers had so increased as to oblige them to purchase fruit in order to supply the demand. How they managed about more cream I never learned,—whether they got a new cow, or whether that with the iron tail was required to do extra duty, was a mystery which the neighbors were never permitted to penetrate. Their customers must have been equally ignorant, as we never heard of their complaining; but I have little doubt that Mrs. Tetchy could tell, to a drop, how much water a quart of milk would bear without the cheat being detected.
It may seem uncharitable to speak thus of one's neighbors, but the Tetchys showed themselves unfriendly to us just in proportion as we gave evidence of beginning to succeed. They might have aided us materially, without injuring themselves in the least. But they had become possessed with the absurd fear, that we, on a single acre and a half, were about raising strawberries enough to ruin their business. Then my mother's having entertained a dozen or two of transient customers was well known to them, for they watched us with unsleeping jealousy; and they were sure we intended to set up another garden. So, although they saw they had a demand for more than their grounds produced, a demand, moreover, that was actually increasing, and this without any abatement in price, yet they preferred procuring their extra supplies from others a great way off to purchasing from us who were close at hand. Such purchases would be just so much encouragement to what they regarded as a rival establishment, which they desired to see suppressed. Hence all intercourse between the families ceased, and we heard nothing but the ill-natured remarks they made about our doings, which other neighbors were kind enough to repeat to us,—the carrying of such things to and fro being considered by some an indispensable part of true neighborly kindness. It is quite probable, however, that these were all pretty well amplified on their way, as I have noted that an ill-natured speech, like a bouncing lie, generally grows by repetition.
But vexatious as all this certainly was, these people were greatly to be pitied. As regarded intelligent horticulture they were altogether in the dark. They took no agricultural papers, and books on gardening were equally unknown upon their table,—the entire literature of the household consisting of the penny newspaper, with piles of sensation novels which the daughters had accumulated. How, from such a dearth of reading suitable to their vocation, could they be expected to be better informed than they were? or, with the peculiar caustic temper that ran through the family, to make friends who might be instructive companions? In agricultural knowledge I was really their superior, having an exhaustless fund of information in the miscellaneous collection I had picked up at the grocer's, of the diversified contents of which there had never been a more painstaking student. By reference to such a source, they would have learned how absurd was their selfish idea that it was possible for me, or even a hundred like me, to overdo the business of raising strawberries, no matter where established, but especially when the fruit was consumed on the very spot where it was produced. I know that this apprehension of producing too much fruit is a mistake of many persons about embarking in the business. But further knowledge invariably corrects it; there is never an over-supply. If, at the beginning of my inquiries, the fear crossed my own mind, it was dissipated by a single conversation with the widow in the market-house.
The horticulturist of this progressive age must not rest satisfied with what he learns on his own ground. There is a vast outside world, full of busy, intelligent minds, not content with things as they find them, but searching, investigating, experimenting, and so successfully, that the horticultural art is largely indebted to them for the amazing progress it has of late years made toward perfection. These great unfolders of some of Nature's profoundest secrets do not hide their lights under a bushel. There is a perpetual interchange among them, by pen, by tongue, and through the press, of the experiences and discoveries of each, the common repositories of all which are the agricultural journals. There collected as in a reservoir, they become fountains of instruction, not only to the pioneer in horticulture, but even to the veteran, and those who refuse to drink thereat will ever continue in the rear of a great army whose march is unceasingly onward. No petty jealousy comes in to mar the harmony of the true votaries of horticulture. There is emulation, but not contention. The heart of such a man enlarges as he pursues his labors, his tastes become refined, his sympathies embrace all others having kindred aspirations; and the successes he may have achieved, with the processes by which they are to be secured, become the common property of all who are wise enough to appreciate them. Our neighbors were born with no such tastes or impulses as these. That it was so proved almost as unfortunate for us as it was for themselves.
Our first season's profits did not make us rich, as the whole income was only a hundred and sixty dollars. But it showed conclusively that we were able to accomplish something handsome in an entirely new field. The cost of plants and of preparing the ground was a little rising thirty dollars. All that remained over these two items was so much in payment of our own labor, and for this we had never before had a market, as it was the contribution of odd times, except an occasional half-day lost from the factory; but as our earnings there were small, this loss was not of much account. Here, then, was more than a hundred dollars made out of almost nothing. This was equal to the wages of both Jane and myself for a quarter of the year. If a half-acre of strawberries, not yet in full bearing, could do this, it was clear that a whole acre of well-established plants would go very far toward enabling us to abandon our factory-life entirely. This was what we were aiming at: we were willing to work, but preferred working at home. Of course it was simply a question of how much we could make on an acre. My mother was sure there could be no doubt about the matter, if she could be allowed to open a strawberry-garden. She seemed to have given up her long-cherished preference for the needle, and now began to realize that there might be something better. Not one of us, however, would hear to the garden, though we now clearly understood how extremely profitable must be that mode of bringing the producer and the consumer together.