The old Squire tried various methods of making the trees bear. At the
suggestion of neighbors he drove rusty nails into the trunks, and buried
bags of pear seeds at the foot of them, and he fertilized the inclosure
richly. But all to no purpose. Finally grandmother advised the old
Squire to spread the leached ashes from her leach tub--after she had
made soap and hulled corn in the spring--on the ground inside the pen.
The old Squire did so, and the next spring both trees blossomed. They
bore bountifully that summer and every season afterward, until they
died.
We had a young neighbor, Alfred Batchelder, who was fond of foraging by
night for plums, grapes, and pears in the orchards of his neighbors. His
own family did not raise fruit; they thought it too much trouble to
cultivate the trees. But Alfred openly boasted of having the best fruit
that the neighborhood afforded. One of Alfred's cronies in these
nocturnal raids was a boy, named Harvey Yeatton, who lived at the
village, six or seven miles away; almost every year he came to visit
Alfred for a week or more in September.
It was a good-natured community. To early apples, indeed, the rogues
were welcome; but garden pears, plums, and grapes were more highly
prized, for in Maine it requires some little care to raise them.
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