I was unwilling to lose a day from the factory by walking several miles into the country to visit the man who supplied my friendly market-woman with strawberries, and from whom the plants were to come. But while waiting for him to bring them in, together with the information I desired as to how and when to plant them, an incident occurred which gave me a complete knowledge of the whole theory of strawberry-culture. I had gone with my mother, one Saturday evening, to a neighboring grocery for certain articles we needed; and while standing at the counter, awaiting our turn to be served, a boy came in with a large bundle of old newspapers for sale as wrappers, placing it on the counter directly beside me. Casting my eye upon it, I noticed that the outside paper bore the title of "The New England Farmer." I then examined the bundle, untied it, and found that there were many numbers of the same journal, and underneath these a collection of "The Country Gentleman." I had never seen an agricultural paper before, though our little penny daily did occasionally contain extracts from some of them. I became immediately interested. The thought struck me that this bundle of old papers, now about to be used for such ignoble purposes as wrappers for groceries, must contain stores of the very information I was so laboriously seeking after. Hastily turning them over, my eye lighted on an article headed "Strawberries: how to plant and how to cultivate them." I was fairly dipping into it, when my mother, giving me a nudge, told me she was ready to go. But it was far otherwise with me, and I began bargaining with the boy for his bundle. That matter was soon concluded, as the grocer declined buying; so I took them at a few cents a pound. They came to nearly a dollar, but I had my week's wages in my pocket, and am certain that I never made an investment so cheerfully, nor any, considering the amount, that was half so useful to me as this. Buying knowledge by the pound was quite a new idea with me.
I lugged the bundle home myself, and went into an examination of its contents with the utmost enthusiasm. Indeed, the whole family shared it with me, so that we were up till nearly midnight engaged in looking after articles treating of the subject then uppermost in our minds. The various numbers contained the collected experience of probably fifty different cultivators of the strawberry, with a mass of information on all matters pertaining to fruits and flowers. It took us a whole week to obtain any tolerable idea of the contents, as our evenings only could be spared for reading. The variety of experiences related was rather confusing,--one writer telling how he had failed altogether, though pursuing the very system under which another had had great success. There were all kinds of theories, and probably all kinds of practice. One grower declared that the ground must be made extremely rich, while another asserted positively that strawberries grew better and bore more abundantly on the poorest soil. One gentleman averred that the only profitable plan was to raise the plants in distinct hills, keeping them clear of runners; some one in the next paper denied this, and vowed that he made more money by crowding his ground with all the plants that could find room upon it to take root. I remember one correspondent who said that letting the weeds grow would kill the strawberries; but there was some one else who assured the editor, that, in his opinion, the strawberries rather liked the weeds, because they shaded the ground.
