Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 September 1875 — Eating Fruit. [ARTICLE]

Eating Fruit.

We hardly know how to account for the popular impression that still prevails in many- rural districts that the free use of fruit is unfriendly to health. It has much to do with the scarcity of fruitgardens and orchards in the country. As a matter of fact, cities and villages are much better supplied with fruit the year round than the surrounding country.’ There are hundreds of farms, even in the oldest parts of the land, where there is no orchard and the only fruit is gathered from a few seedling apple trees grown in the fence-corners. The wants of cities are supplied not so much from the proper farming districts as from a few men in their suburbs who make a business of growing fruit for market. The farmers who raise a good variety of small fruits for the supply of their own families are still the exception. The vih lager, with his quarter or half acre lot, will have his patch of strawberries, his grape-vines and pear trees, apd talk intelligently of the varietv of these fruits. Elis table is well supplied with these luxuries for at least half of the year. But there is a lamentable dearth of good fruit upon the farm from the want of conviction that it pays. It does payin personal comfort* and health, it in nothing else. The medical facultywill bear testimony to the good influence of ripe fruit upon the animal economy. They regulate the system better than anything else and forestall many of the diseases to which we are liable in the summer and fall. A quaint old gentleman of our acquaintance often remarks thaFapples are the only pills he takes. He takes these every day in the year when they can be found in the market, and fills up the interval between the old and the new crop with other fruits. He has hardly seen a sick day in forty’ years and pays no doctor’s bill. We’ want more good fruit, especially upon our farms, and the habit of eating fruit at our meals. This is just one of the matters in which farmers’ wives can exert an influence. Many a good man would set out fruit trees and bushes if he were only reminded of it at the right time. One right time will be this autumn —at least in all but the very coldest parts of this country. A few dollars invested then will bring abundant returns in from one to five years. It is more intimately connected with good morals than our philosophers think. With good digestion it is quite easy to fulfill the law of love.— Grocery and Provision Hecietc.