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Unmasking the Sexual Offender 1st Edition Veronique N.
Valliere Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Veronique N. Valliere
ISBN(s): 9781003156284, 1003156282
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 11.55 MB
Year: 2023
Language: english
Unmasking the Sexual Offender

This book unmasks the sexual offender by providing clear, comprehensible information
about the motivations, techniques, and dynamics of sexual offenders and their behavior. It
not only explores the biases and myths that the reader may rely upon to understand deviance
but also explains pathways to offending, the distorted thinking and relating that offend-
ers engage in, and the ways offenders manipulate and exploit others. Sexual offenders are
surrounded by mythology, fascination, and revulsion. People who commit sexual offenses
present difficult and complicated issues interpersonally, as well as in treatment and man-
agement; denial, victim-blaming, aggression, and blatant chronic deception are inherent
in interactions with them. Unfortunately, the failure to truly understand their motives and
techniques helps provide excuses for and further camouflage of their deviance.
The first part of the text explores the presumptions commonly adopted about sexual
offenders and shows how misinformation supports the inappropriate behavior of the sexual
offender. The second section focuses on exposing the sexual offender using straightforward
language and tangible examples. A final, third section includes safety and management
strategies for dealing with sex offenders for those both inside and outside the realms of law
enforcement and offender supervision.
This book is intended for anyone interested in learning about sexual offenders. It is useful
for both professionals and non-professionals, including students, paralegals, victim advo-
cates, and others involved in the criminal justice system or mental health field.

Veronique N. Valliere is a licensed psychologist. She has her doctorate in clinical psychol-
ogy from the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology of Rutgers Univer-
sity. She has over 30 years’ experience in the field and has worked clinically with violent
offenders and their victims, adult and child. She is the owner and director of Valliere &
Counseling Associates, Inc., an outpatient treatment center for mental health and interper-
sonal violence, with offices that treat victims and offenders, as well as provides consultation,
training, expert witness services, and evaluations. She serves on the Pennsylvania Sexual
Offender Assessment Board, reappointed continuously since 1997. She has published on
the topic of sexual assault and presented on the same at international, national, and local
conferences. She has trained for the FBI, DOJ, DOD, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Ontario
Police, Alberta Crown Prosecutor’s Office, Amber Alert, Army JAG Office, Pennsylvania
State Parole, National Center for the Prosecution of Violence Against Women, and other
agencies. She been a guest presenter at many forensic and violence related conferences. She
is recognized as an expert on victim behavior and offenders, testifying nationally and inter-
nationally. She has testified before the US Congress and Judiciary Committee regarding
sexual assault in the military, as well as consulted with the Department of Defense and the
US Department of Justice. She has been interviewed for popular magazines on sexual assault
and domestic violence, including New York Times, The Atlantic, People, Self, and Good House-
keeping. She has appeared on “PBS News Hour,” “CBS This Morning,” and other programs
and radio shows. Dr. Valliere was used as an expert in the sexual assault trial of Bill Cosby.
In 2009, she established an annual conference on the investigation, prosecution, and treat-
ment of violence entitled “Right From the Start.” Dr. Valliere is the author of Understanding
Victim Response to Interpersonal Violence: A Guide for Investigators and Prosecutors, published by
Routledge Press.
Unmasking the Sexual Offender

Veronique N. Valliere
Designed cover image: Marccophoto
First published 2023
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 Veronique N. Valliere
The right of Veronique N. Valliere to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or
other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying
and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.

ISBN: 978-0-367-74153-2 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-367-74124-2 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-15628-4 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003156284
Typeset in Bembo
by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.
To those who supported and loved me through this process. I
dedicate this book to the possibility that it will help us understand
what threatens us, arm us against danger, and have courage to face
what scares us.
Contents

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction 1

SECTION I
The Offender’s Best Weapon: Society as
the Audience to the Offense 5

1 The Co-Defendants: The Role of the Audience to a Sexual Offense 7

The Role of the Audience in the Facilitation of Sexual Violence 7
Societal Building Blocks for Construction of a Good Offense 9
Summary 16

2 Weaponized Humanity: Why We Offer Denial and

Disbelief to Offenders 19
Biases – Constructs of Complacency 20
The Need to Be “Good” 23
Our Narcissism 24
Misapplied Social Rules and Understanding of Deception 25
Confused by “Counterintuitive” Behavior 27
Need for Ideal Victims 28
Summary 28

3 Myth-Information: Our Misinformed Beliefs about Sexual Offenders 30

Not Always Monsters – The Insidious Normalcy of the Sex Offender 30
The Mythos of False Allegations 32
“Boys Will Be Boys” and Myth of the Unmanageable Arousal 33
“The Devil Made Him Do It” – The Fable of “It Wasn’t Me” 33
The Fiction of Low Self-Esteem, Immaturity, or Sexual Deprivation 34
“He Is Crazy/Sick/Sex Addicted” – The Myth of Mental Illness and Sexual Offending 36
“That’s Not His Type” – The Problem with Typologies 37
“Hurt People Hurt People” – The Problem of the Victimized Victimizer 38
viii Contents

Myth: Consent Is Too Complicated 39

Summary 40

4 “I Know Him – He’s Not Like That”: The Struggle to Believe 43

Public, Private, and Secret Selves 43
“Stranger Danger” Myth – The Impact of a Relationship on Denial 45
“He’s Good Down Deep!” – All or Nothing Thinking 46
Summary 47

5 The Theater of Sexual Assault: The Act versus the Production 49

Deviance: Criminogenic or Sexual Needs 49
The Stages of Criminal Behavior – Modified 49
Mistakes in Understanding Offenses and Offenders 52
Summary 55

SECTION II
Unmasking the Sex Offender 57

6 Defining Deviance: The Pathway to Offending 59

Two Primary Pathways to Offending – Character and Sexual Deviance 59
Power of Deviance 63
Deviance and Distortions 64
Summary 65

7 Character Deviance: “He’s Not Sick – He’s Bad” 66

What Is a Personality Disorder? 66
Survival of the Fittest: Antisociality as a Character Pathway 68
Narcissism and Sexual Offending 71
Summary 74

8 Sexual Deviance: The Sexual Pathway to Offending 76

Paraphilias and Paraphilic Disorders 76
Paraphilic Interest and Sexual Crimes 78
Fantasy and Deviance 81
Typologies of Offenders: Understanding Preference and Barriers 83
Summary 85

9 Tools of the Trade: The Manipulations of the Offender 86

Sexual Assault and the “V” Word – Vulnerability 86
Nice Is a Four-Letter Word 89
“Grooming” – Preparing the Victim 90
Co-Opted: Preparing the Audience 93
Deception 95
Using Social Rules for Control 96
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domesticated fruits and berries is a consummation devoutly to be
wished.
Our wild crab-apples, for instance, of which there are five types,
while excessively sour, have a superabundance of flavor. By
transfusing their blood into the domesticated apples we can
eliminate the excess of acid and give to many of our big apples a
richer aroma.
The persimmon is one of our native fruits of unlimited
possibilities. Heretofore, our markets have been supplied chiefly with
the Japanese kaki, raised in California or Florida. It is a delicious
fruit, but there are native varieties which in the opinion of some are
even finer than the Japanese. Ordinarily the wild American
persimmon is as sour and astringent as a crabapple, fit only for the
'coon and the 'possum. But there have been enthusiasts whose
belief in the future of our persimmon amounted to a passion. One of
these was Bryant, "whose zeal as a cultivator and whose interest in
fruit-growing were almost as great as his poetic enthusiasm." To
Professor Bailey he expressed his belief that the finest persimmons
of the future would be grown in the alluvial meadows of southern
Indiana.
While the persimmon is as delicious as the banana, the demand
for it has not been so great as it will be when the public learns that
this fruit has the finest Flavor and is most wholesome when it looks
like an overripe tomato which no one would buy. An Italian pushcart
man used to smile when he saw me approaching. He knew I would
pick out those which were so soft that they could be taken home
only in a paper box. "Ah, you know, you know!" he used to say,
pleased that his best things were not left on his hands by the
uninformed multitude.
As a boy I used to enjoy hugely the May apple—a plum-shaped
fruit growing on a low plant. What was my indignation when, some
years later, I began to study botany and found in Professor Asa
Gray's text book a description of that fruit, ending with the words:
"Eaten by pigs and boys." I promptly made up my mind that if adults
do not relish this luscious fruit they have something to learn from
pigs and boys.
Another Southern fruit, abundant in Missouri, which greatly
pleased my boyish palate, was the pawpaw. Professor Bailey says
that most people do not relish its flavor, nor does he believe that it
will be possible to awaken much interest in this fruit. Mr. Powell, on
the other hand, pays it a high tribute. He sees "no reason why this
delicious fruit, a sort of hardy banana, should not be grown
everywhere in our gardens."
Those are the words of an epicure. I am sure the pawpaw has a
great future. To many it may be an acquired taste, but so are olives,
and the most appetizing of all table delicacies, Russian caviare. I
thank my stars that I always took naturally to such things; it has
added much to the pleasures of life. So far as pawpaws are
concerned, it will be easier to persuade skeptics to try to learn to like
them if they are told that their juice is considered by medical men a
great aid to digestion. Papain is much used as a substitute for soda
mints.

GOVERNMENTAL GASTRONOMY.

It is safe to say that in no other country has the Government

done so much as ours has to advise and aid those who raise foods
and those who prepare them for the table. In the preceding pages
reference has been made to dozens of Farmers' Bulletins and other
publications containing the results of experiments, made at the cost
of many millions of dollars, with a view to informing the public on
those matters. Every State and Territory now has its own Agricultural
Experiment Stations. Primarily, the aims of these stations are of
course agricultural and economic; in the last analysis, however, what
are all the Bulletins issued by them but so many lessons in national
gastronomy?
A few years ago the Department of Agriculture boldly invaded the
kitchen itself, providing excellent lessons in the arts of preparing and
preserving good food, in such bulletins as "The Care of Milk and Its
Use in the Home," "Bread and Bread-making," "Food Customs and
Diet in American Homes," "Care of Food in the Home," "Economical
Use of Meat in the Home," "Preparation of Vegetables for the Table,"
"Composition and Digestibility of Potatoes and Eggs," "Cereal
Breakfast Foods," "Food Value of Cottage Cheese, Rice, Peas, and
Bacon," "Cheese and Its Economic Uses in the Diet," "Varieties of
Cheese," "Fish as Food," "Sugar as Food," "Beans, Peas, and Other
Legumes as Food," "Poultry as Food," "Use of Fruit as Food," "Nuts
and Their Uses as Food," "Canning Vegetables in the Home," etc.
For farmers, truck gardeners, and those who market foods, there
is a still longer list of Bulletins, Circulars, Experiment Station Reports,
and other Government publications. To mention only a few of them:
"Potato Culture," "Sheep-feeding," "The Sugar Beet," "Asparagus
Culture," "Marketing Farm Produce," "Care of Milk on the Farm,"
"Ducks and Geese," "Rice Culture," "The Apple and How to Grow It,"
"Grape Growing in the South," "Home Fruit Garden," "Home
Vineyard," "Cheese-making on the Farm," "Cranberry Culture,"
"Squab Raising," "Meat on the Farm: Butchering, Curing, Etc.,"
"Importation of Game Birds and Eggs for Propagation,"
"Strawberries," "Turkeys," "Canned Fruits, Preserves, and Jellies,"
"Cream Separators on Western Farms," "Raspberries," "Tomatoes,"
"The Guinea Fowl," "Cucumbers," "Maple Sugar and Syrup," "Home
Vegetable Garden," "Celery," "Poultry Management," "Sweet
Potatoes," "Onion Culture," "A Successful Poultry and Dairy Farm,"
"Bees," "A Successful Hog and Seed-Corn Farm," "Manufacture of
Butter for Storage," "Butter-making on the Farm," "Facts Concerning
the History, Commerce and Manufacture of Butter," "The Cultivation
of Mushrooms," and many more.
These valuable monographs were prepared by experts, mostly
specialists, women as well as men. Distributed free when first
published, they are afterwards sold at cost price, usually a nickel
apiece; few of them cost more than a dime. Full lists, with prices and
general instructions can be obtained by sending a postal card to the
Superintendent of Documents at Washington. There are separate
price lists of documents relating to agriculture, dairying, food and
diet, irrigation, soils, wild animals, fishes, health and hygiene,
poultry and birds, etc.
In addition to all these documents there are many papers in the
Daily Consular and Trade Reports containing valuable information on
foreign foods and methods of marketing, gathered by the Consuls at
the Government's request.
The supplying of information on everything relating to foods is
only one phase of the Government's gastronomic activity. Another
consists in calling attention to neglected edible plants. On this
subject one of the experts of the Bureau of Plant Industry says:
What we call weeds are no more so than other plants that we term
vegetables. Weeds are vegetables, and our so-called vegetables were once
upon a time no more than weeds. The classification results from a matter of
habit. We are slaves of habit, and because we are so it has not occurred to us
that we could eat anything but just the old list of vegetables our ancestors
have eaten for generations. But now we are having our eyes opened and are
beginning to peer into fence corners and back yards and wild pastures for
new and wonderful foodstuffs that we have heretofore regarded as just
weeds. It is a bit mortifying that because of this preconceived idea we have
let most nutritious and valuable foodstuffs go to waste under our very eyes,
while perhaps we were wailing that we had little to eat and that vegetables
were too expensive and so on.

Among the plants thus neglected, but which, if properly improved

and marketed, would enrich truck farmers, are yellow dock,
dandelions, milkweed, golden thistles, mallows, purslane
(recommended by Thoreau), poke shoot, red clover, sorrel, hop
shoots, yarrow, leek, and lupines.
A third gastronomic function of our Government is the importing
of foreign fruits and vegetables that promise to add agreeable
variety to the American dietary. For this purpose experts are sent to
all parts of the world to find and bring home new plants which are
then acclimated in accordance with the latest scientific methods.
 David Fairchild, one of these gastronomic explorers, has
repeatedly given in the "National Geographic Magazine" fascinating
glimpses of the activity of the Bureau of Plant Industry in this
direction. What he says about the date is particularly suggestive.
Search through the deserts of the world has revealed the fact
that the dates of our markets are only one or two kinds of the vast
number of varieties known to the Arabs and others whose principal
food is the date. "Those we prize as delicacies are by no means
looked upon by the desert dwellers as their best." The search has
brought to light, among other desirable kinds, "the hard, dry date,
which Americans do not know at all, and which they will learn to
appreciate as a food, just as the Arab has."
In 1906 no fewer than a hundred and seventy varieties of dates
had been introduced, and many of these are now growing
successfully in Arizona. The time will come when we can have the
choice of as many different kinds of dates in our markets as we have
now of apples and pears. And this experiment with dates is, as Mr.
Fairchild says, something that "private enterprise would not have
undertaken for decades to come."
Experiments by the Bureau of Plant Industry are being carried on
also in Porto Rico, the Philippines, Hawaii, and the Panama Canal
Zone. It makes one's mouth water to read what Mr. Fairchild writes,
for instance, of the mangosteen. There are at least fifteen edible
species. "It has a beautiful white fruit pulp, more delicate than that
of a plum, and a flavor that is indescribably delicate and luscious,
while its purple-brown rind will distinguish it from all other fruits and
make it bring fancy prices wherever it is offered for sale."
The mango has for many years tried to secure a place in our
markets, but the specimens supplied—usually from worthless
seedling trees—have given it a bad name.
The Government office of Pomology has been cultivating the
infinitely superior Mulgoba mangoes of East India, "fit to set before a
king," and will probably, ere long, add this to the list of marketable
delicacies. In India there are mangoes of all sizes and flavors, some
of which Americans of the future will no doubt enjoy.
The United States Government has, furthermore, gone into the
business of creating entirely new fruits, and valuable varieties of
nuts, particularly pecans, on which the Department of Agriculture
has specialized. Great improvements in corn, wheat, and other
cereals have also been made at the Government's Experiment
Stations, not to speak of stock breeding, some of which has a
gastronomic value. Nearly every volume of the "Year Book" of the
Department of Agriculture has a chapter or two on this subject, and
some of the papers have been reprinted separately.
Probably the two most important of the new creations are the
tangelo and the citrange—new names for new fruits which seem
destined to become as common in our markets as oranges, lemons,
limes and grapefruit.
The tangelo is a hybrid of the tangerine orange and the pomelo
(grapefruit). There are several varieties. It is described as being
sweeter than the pomelo, but more sprightly acid than the
tangerine. It has the loose "kid-glove" skin of the latter fruit. "The
characteristic bitter flavor of the pomelo is considerably reduced but
remains as a pleasant suggestion of that popular fruit." I have had
no opportunity to try this novelty, but Professor Bailey pronounces it
"an excellent dessert fruit and an interesting and valuable
acquisition."
Of the citrange, also, there are several varieties, the Rusk, Willits,
and Morton. They are the outcome of an attempt to combine the
hardiness of the worthless trifoliata orange (citrus trifoliata) with the
sweetness of the common orange. The Morton is very near to a
sweet orange; while the Willits makes a good drink and replaces the
lemon for culinary purposes. The Rusk "makes a very delightful
citrangeade, a good pie, and excellent marmalade and preserves.
For the latter uses it may ultimately be grown extensively."

BURBANK'S NEW FRUITS AND VEGETABLES.

 As a creator of new plants useful to mankind as superior foods,
or because of their beauty, no man is the peer of Luther Burbank, of
Santa Rosa, California. In the words of David Starr Jordan, president
of the Leland Stanford University, "Luther Burbank is the greatest
originator of new and valuable forms of plant life of this or any other
age." "He is all that he has ever been said to be, and more," says
Professor Bailey of Cornell University, America's chief authority on
horticulture; and the leading foreign botanist, Hugo de Vries, of
Amsterdam, admits that "in all Europe there is no one who can even
compare with Luther Burbank. He is a unique, great genius."
That last sentence explains Mr. Burbank's supremacy. He has, it
must be admitted, enjoyed unique advantages. The climate of
California has been in his favor, enabling him in some cases to raise
more than one crop in a year and to operate on a larger scale than
any one else has ever done. Of fruits alone, for instance, he has had
under test at one time "300,000 distinct varieties of plums, different
in foliage, in form of fruit, in shipping, keeping, and canning
qualities, 60,000 peaches and nectarines, five to six thousand
almonds, 2,000 cherries, 2,000 pears, 1,000 grapes, 3,000 apples,
1,200 quinces, 5,000 walnuts, 5,000 chestnuts, five to six thousand
berries of various kinds, with many thousands of other fruits,
flowers, and vegetables."
Such advantages, however, would not have enabled Mr. Burbank
to make his marvelous improvements along all the lines hinted at in
the quotation just made.
The world owes these choice gifts to the fact that he is a genius,
an artist, an epicure, and an enthusiast, as well as a plant breeder.
"The most obvious truth which strikes one when he attempts to
make a reflective or historical study of the improvement of our
native fruits, is the fact that in nearly every case the amelioration
has come from the force of circumstances and not from the choice
or design of men.... What has been called plant breeding is mostly
discovery; or, in other words, so far as the cultivator is concerned, it
is accident," writes Professor Bailey, in his "Sketch of the Evolution of
Our Native Fruits." In another of his books, "Plant Breeding," after
stating that in 1892 American nurserymen were offering 878
varieties of apples, he adds that "it is doubtful if one in the whole lot
was the result of any attempt on the part of the originator to
produce a variety with definite qualities."
 LUTHER BURBANK

These remarks apply to the methods of plant breeders in general.

But there are exceptions, and Luther Burbank is the most important
of them by far. True, he also had to rely on accident, such as the
discovery of a California poppy with a small crimson spot, which he
gradually enlarged till the whole flower was crimson; and it is for the
purpose of taking advantage of lucky "accidents" that he raises
plants in such unprecedented numbers. But chance is only one of his
assets. He has in his mind a mental pattern, which "is made just as
real and definite as the pattern of an inventor, or the model of a
sculptor," as his biographer remarks.
In other words, his imagination conjures a fruit improved along a
definite line in Flavor, color, size, or keeping quality, and he then
proceeds to hybridize till he has achieved the ideal he has in his
mind, though it may take a decade or longer to do it.
In one of Mr. Burbank's bulletins there is a picture of John
Burroughs sampling the "Patagonia" strawberry in its originator's
garden at Santa Rosa. In this berry Mr. Burroughs discovered "a
wonderful pineapple flavor" and pronounced it the most delicious
strawberry he had ever tasted. It is claimed for it that it is an
exceptionally good keeper, and that it can be freely eaten by those
with whom the common acid strawberries disagree. It is the result of
a full quarter of a century's patient experiments. For twenty years
Mr. Burbank had, as he frankly admits, tried in vain to improve on
the finest berries in the market. Knowing that all our best
strawberries have descended wholly or in part from one of the
Chilian varieties, he got one of his collectors in Chili, some years
ago, to send him seeds of wild strawberries from the Cordillera and
from the Coast regions. Among the plants which grew from these
seeds he found some that promised to be of great value when
crossed with the best American and European strains. With his usual
Edisonian patience, he experimented until "among the very
numerous seedlings under test was found this unique berry, which
was at once recognized as the grand prize."
In this little genealogical tale we have an excellent illustration of
that "judgment as to what will likely be good and what bad" which,
in the words of Professor Bailey, is "the very core of plant-breeding,"
and in which "Burbank excels." The Burbank bulletins give many
similar instances; and in view of the fact that his rivals and others
have belittled his labors, it is proper that he should plead his own
cause. His bulletins call attention to some of the results of his
methods as compared with those of other plant-breeders. Here, for
instance, is a fact for his detractors: "Nearly 95 per cent. of the new
plums introduced since 1890, now catalogued as standards,
originated on my own farms, although nearly four times as many
new varieties have been introduced by other dealers. Most of the
introductions of others are not now generally even listed."
The Burbank plum, which was introduced less than twenty years
ago, is now perhaps more widely known than any other plum, the
world over; but, he says, "hundreds of better plums have since been
produced on my experiment farms."
The Burbank potato is now the universal standard in the Pacific
Coast States and is gradually taking the lead in the Middle West. It
originated at Mr. Burbank's home place in Massachusetts in 1873,
and was subsequently much improved by him in California. As H. S.
Harwood remarks in his admirable book on the career and the
achievements of Mr. Burbank, "New Creations in Plant Life" (the
Macmillan Co.), "he has had four main objects in view in the work: A
potato with a better flavor, one with a relatively larger amount of
sugar, one that will be a larger size and all of the same uniform
shape and size, and one that will better resist diseases and be a
larger yielder than any potato now known." In all these points he
has succeeded; never, anywhere, have I eaten potatoes so mealy, so
digestible, and, above all, so rich in Flavor as Burbank's. When first
introduced in California, in 1876, "old potato growers would have
none of it, because it was new and because it was white. You will
have to hunt a long time to find red potatoes now," writes Mr.
Burbank. J. M. Eddy, Secretary of the Stockton Chamber of
Commerce, stated in 1910 that in San Joaquin County 4,750,000
bushels, or 95 per cent. of the entire output, were Burbank
potatoes; and according to the U. S. Department of Agriculture the
Burbank potato is adding more than $17,000,000 to the farm
incomes of America alone.
"Corn is America's biggest crop. To add only one kernel to the ear
of corn means a five million bushel crop increase.
"In the best corn States, corn grows from eight to ten feet high,
and bears an average of slightly less than two ears to the stalk.
"During the past summer Luther Burbank, on his Santa Rosa
experiment farm, has grown corn sixteen feet in height, bearing
thirty-two ears to the stalk."
These statements are cited from the prospectus of the Luther
Burbank Society issued in the year 1912, relating to the twelve
superbly illustrated volumes to be published in which the Burbank
discoveries or inventions (nearly 1,300 in all) are described with full
directions as to how his methods can be applied on every farm, in
every fruit orchard, in every truck or home garden, to the delight
and profit of thousands.
One of Mr. Burbank's absolutely new creations is the pomato. It
is the evolution of the potato seedball, heretofore absolutely useless,
except for experimenters. "It first appears," says Mr. Harwood, "as a
tiny green ball upon the potato top, and develops as the season
progresses into a fruit the size and general shape of a small
tomato.... It is delightful to the taste, having the suggestion of quite
a number of different fruits and yet not easily identified with any
particular one.... It is fine eaten raw out of the hand, delicious when
cooked, and excellent as a preserve."
Some years ago Mr. Burbank wrote in regard to his new plants
that every one "has proved better than those known before in some
new quality, in some soils and climates. All do not thrive everywhere.
Please name one good fruit or nut that does."
The last two sentences are directed at those of his critics who
triumphantly point to cases of failure of his new products in this or
that locality. Judgment has to be used; "certain varieties which are a
success in one locality may be, and often are, a complete failure a
few miles distant, or nearby on a different soil or at a different
elevation."
The Burbank Crimson Winter Rhubarb has been offered by
unprincipled dealers in the cold Northern States, though they must
have known that it could not prove successful there. For this new
type the claim is made that it is the most valuable vegetable
introduced during the last quarter of a century. So many fortunes
have been made with it in California and Florida that it has been
named "The Mortgage Lifter." The chief forester of the Government
of South Africa reports that at Cape Town, where all other rhubarbs
had been a failure for two centuries, the Burbank Crimson Winter
variety proved to be a complete success. Yet Mr. Burbank now has a
still further improved variety, the Giant, which excels the original
Crimson Winter Rhubarb "at least 400 per cent."
The list of delicacies for which American—and foreign—epicures
are indebted to this inventor includes many other vegetables,
berries, fruits, and nuts. He has not only improved the Flavor of the
blackberry, but taken away its thorns. He has created a genuine new
species by uniting the blood of the blackberry with that of the
raspberry. The phenomenal berry now in such great demand on the
Pacific Coast, was evolved from the dewberry. Burbank's Himalayan
yields four times as much by weight as any other berry, and keeps
twice as long; hence it has become "the most profitable shipping
berry."
Everybody likes quince jelly and marmalade, but it remained for
Mr. Burbank to create the pineapple quince, which can be eaten out
of hand like an apple. For his improved cherry fabulous sums have
been paid in Eastern markets—over three dollars a pound in one
case.
"Cauliflower is only cabbage with a college education," said Mark
Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson. What Luther Burbank is doing besides
creating entirely new fruits and vegetables, is to give the older ones
a college education. He has grown, to cite his own words, "several
millions of new fruits ... in the constant effort to eliminate faults and
substantiate virtues."
Burbank's Formosa plum blends at least fifteen different varieties
in its origin. It is "unequaled in quality," free from all disease, and
keeps remarkably well. Another of his new plums is practically
without a pit, while a third has the flavor of a Bartlett pear. Into
another he has bred "a delicious fragrance, so powerful that when
left in a closed room over night the whole apartment will be
delightfully saturated with the odor." The new Nixie plum has, when
cooked, the flavor and appearance of cranberries. It is described as
"the forerunner of a wholly new class of fruits," and as having an
"almost incomparably delicious" flavor, which it owes to the blood of
the wild Sierra plum.
Some of Mr. Burbank's prunes excel the best of the French; and
his plumcot is another of the entirely new fruits he has given the
world. In creating this, he bred together a wild American plum, a
Japanese plum, and an apricot, making a fruit which differs in flavor,
color and texture from any other kind. There are already several
varieties of it.
Of his successful experiments in "educating" nuts three may be
mentioned. He has made chestnut trees bear at the unheard-of early
age of a year and a half; he has created a "paper shell" walnut; and,
what is more remarkable still, he has removed from the walnut the
disagreeably bitter inside skin which makes it indigestible because of
the tannin in it.
Grapes have not been neglected. In the summer of 1911 I asked
him if he would not undertake to educate some other grapes grown
in California to the level of the Muscatels and at the same time give
the Muscatel a thicker skin to make it better able to stand
transportation to the East. He answered in a letter dated July 25,
that he was "at work on several of the California grapes to give them
better flavors, thicker skins, and better keeping qualities; and," he
added, "I assure you that I am having good success. They are not
yet ready to send out."
 The Newtown Pippin is one of the finest apples, but he has a
descendant of it which is a far better bearer and has "an added
aromatic fragrance." There are improved peaches, too; also, many
beautiful flowers new to the world; but of flowers this is not the
place to write.
Is it not strange that this unselfish wonder-worker, whose object
is not to make money (except for the purpose of enabling him to go
on with his experiments), should have met with so much hostility?
Yet he declares that the greatest inconvenience or injustice he has
met is not misunderstanding, prejudice, envy, jealousy, or
ingratitude, but the fact that purchasers are so often deceived by
unscrupulous dealers who, misusing his name, foist upon the public
hardy bananas, blue roses, seedless watermelons, and a thousand
other things, including United States Government thorny cactus for
the Burbank Thornless.
On this point Mr. Burbank has reason to write with a feeling of
mingled pride and resentment. In 1896 the first scientific
experiments for the improvement of cactus as food for man and
beast were made on his farms. Eight years later, when these costly
experiments were crowned with success, the Department of
Agriculture spent $10,000 in searching for a thornless cactus like
those already produced by Mr. Burbank. The result was a failure; the
"spineless" cactus sent out were not spineless, not safe to handle or
feed to stock, while the fruit was "seedy and poor."
 Burbank's Spineless Cactus

The Burbank improved cactus, on the other hand, is free not only
from the long spines but from the even more harmful microscopic
spicules. It is therefore "as safe to handle and as safe to feed as
beets, potatoes, carrots or pumpkins." The new thornless varieties
will produce a hundred tons of good feed where the average wild
ones will yield only ten tons of inferior fodder. It can be grown on
millions of acres of deserts where no other edible vegetation can be
raised, and as it is possible to produce a thousand tons of feed on a
single acre, the imagination conjures up the time when beef will
once more be as abundant, as good, and as cheap as it was in the
days of unlimited pasturage.
The leaves or slabs are valuable as food for other farm animals,
including poultry.
 The fruit, also, is produced in enormous quantity and is likely to
become as important in our markets as bananas and oranges. The
cactus bearing the best fruit is not yet quite spineless, but the fine
bristles on the fruits are easily removed with a small whiskbroom
before picking. Burbank's 1912 Spineless Cactus bulletin lists more
than a dozen varieties cultivated for the fruit, and fifteen varieties
raised for forage.
The cactus fruit "can be produced at less than one-tenth the
expense of producing apples, oranges, apricots, grapes, plums, or
peaches." There is never a failure in the crop, and the fruit can be
stored like apples. It will oust the injurious "fillers" and adulterants
now used by manufacturers. Excellent jams, jellies, syrups,
marmalades and preserves can be made of cactus fruit at a
minimum cost. For candies and for pickling, also, it can be used to
advantage, and "the juice from the fruits of the crimson varieties is
used for coloring ices, jelly and confectionery. No more beautiful
colors can be imagined."
Mr. Burbank takes a keen delight in his new plants, and like other
artists, he likes to know that you really see and feel what he has
done. When we visited him in the summer of 1909, in company with
John Burroughs and the California poet, Charles Keeler, nothing
seemed to please him more than the proof we gave that we were
actually familiar with his creations, by our comments on the
improvements he had made in his crimson and crimson-and-gold
California poppies and the wonderful Shirleys since we last raised
them, the previous summer, in our Maine grounds. I felt like Parsifal
in the enchanted garden. We had a chance to stroke the spineless
blackberry and cactus, and to taste various kinds of berries and
fruits more luscious than any that mortals have eaten since the
Garden of Eden was destroyed.
 XII COMMERCIAL VALUE OF FLAVOR
PALATABILITY DECIDES PERMANENCE.

uther Burbank is, as already noted, an epicure. No one

enjoys his new products more than he does, and in his
bulletins he never omits to call attention to the "added
aromatic fragrance" or the delicious flavor of his
improved fruits.
What I wish particularly to call attention to now, however, is that
he fully realizes the commercial value of Flavor. He holds, as Mr.
Harwood wrote in 1905, that "it is highly important in the production
of a new fruit or vegetable to make it preëminently palatable, for, in
the last analysis, it is palatability that decides the permanence of any
new food. If palatability be eliminated as a factor, then mankind is
prone to consider the food,—no matter what its form or character,—
a medicine, to be taken because it produces certain necessary
results."
When I informed him that I was writing a book on Food and
Flavor he sent me a long letter, dated December 18, 1912, from
which I take the liberty of citing the following illuminating
paragraphs:
"I am very glad that you have taken up the subject of flavor in
food. It is a far more important matter than most people believe.
Color and flavor both aid digestion very materially, most especially
flavor, and my work from the first has been among food and drug
plants to obtain pure, pleasing flavors (and in flowers, fragrance)
and I have been as successful in that line as in any other line of
work.
"Vegetables—like celery, cabbage, cauliflower, carrots, turnips,
beets, lettuce, peas, beans, sweet corn and especially artichokes,
have not only had ill flavors, but have been lacking in sweetness.
These can be just as readily added as form, size or color. Even the
pot herbs need attention fully as much as anything else, and they
will take a lot of time.
"Take savory, sage, or any other herb seedlings, four out of five
of them will have a poor flavor, while the fifth will have the most
delicious odor, flavor and fragrance. Sometimes only one in a
hundred or so has this delightful combination. It is simply a matter
of selection to produce these herbs so that all will have the delightful
flavor of the single individual.
"It is astounding that more attention has not been placed on this
line of plant improvement, though until my work commenced in this
line some twenty-five years ago, no one seems to have thought that
these changes could be made.
"I have only outlined briefly the almost infinite number of
improvements that could be named, not only in the plants named,
but in all other plants as well as fruits; in which people recognize
flavors most quickly.
"It is almost necessary to knock a man down before you can
convince him that there are differences in flavors of herbs and
vegetables, or that such things as coffee, cinnamon and other plants
can be improved in this respect."

EATING WITH THE EYES.

The object of this whole book is to furnish a "knockdown"

argument as to the overwhelming importance of securing the best
flavors in food and to demonstrate at the same time that
commercially the richest Flavor pays best.
A few years ago Professor J. L. Henderson of the Harvard Medical
School astonished newspaper readers by saying that the needed
food for one person costs only ten cents a day and that the rest we
spend goes largely for flavor.
 Had he made this remark some years hence he might have said
"goes chiefly for flavor." At the present time, unfortunately, not a few
purchasers of foods are guided to a considerable extent by
appearance. Dr. Wiley has written trenchantly on the widely
prevalent habit of "eating with the eyes"—of selecting articles of
food for their size and color instead of their flavor. Inferior or
imitation butter, for example, is artificially colored and the ignorant
consumer meekly buys it. The epicure buys butter for its Flavor and
the dealer cannot deceive his eyes. To him, in the words of Dr. Wiley,
"the natural tint of butter is as much more attractive than the
artificial as any natural color is superior to the artificial. There is the
same difference between the natural tint of butter and the artificial
as there is between the natural rose of the cheek and its painted
substitute. The dairymen of our country are honest and honorable
and evidently do not clearly see the false position in which the
practice of coloring butter puts them. When the dairymen of the
country understand that the naturally colored products will bring the
highest price on the market and appeal more strongly to the
confidence of the consumer it is believed the artificial coloring in
butter will be relegated to the scrap pile of useless processes."
Natural butter is yellow in May and June; but whoever buys yellow
butter at other times in the belief that it is fresh is a greenhorn.
Even harmless coloring matter, like carrot juice, is objectionable,
because it makes the butter spoil sooner.
George K. Holmes, Chief of the Division of Foreign Markets,
contributed to the Yearbook of the Department of Agriculture for
1904 an article entitled "Consumers' Fancies" which gives some
curious illustrations of the stupid underrating of the all-important
Flavor. To cite one of them: "Although it may seem that it is
positively not worth while, to say nothing of money, to buy a nut
except to enjoy its flavor, yet to taste is assigned only 25 per cent.,
while 50 per cent. is given to the eye, the remaining 25 per cent.
going to the convenience of cracking the shells."
Judges at county fairs have been known to allow 20 points on
looks and only 15 on the flavor of foods. They knew that city folk are
easily fooled by appearances. On this point Mr. Holmes remarks: "In
the city, a large city especially, the appearance of an apple is
everything and taste nothing, unless the purchaser was once a
country boy and enjoyed the freedom of an orchard." And again:
"City-bred people, who have little knowledge of the origin and real
character of food and food products, such as the country man has,
and who have no childhood's acquaintance with the good things of
the farm, are especially liable to suggestion; they are governed
largely by appearances in their selection of farm products and are
easily deceived by the trick of a false name or a false ingredient in a
prepared food."
One of the standing jokes in our comic papers concerns the
"hayseed" who comes to town and buys a "gold brick." If the
farmers edited comic papers, they would have a standing joke about
the city folk who buy their showy products, leaving them the best
flavored, which may not appeal to the eye.
It is not true, however, that all the showy fruits are insipid and all
the small plain fruits full-flavored. The delicious Winter Nellis pear is
not nearly as pretty to look at as the Bartlett, yet it is quite as
popular, while the Bartlett is as luscious as it is beautiful and often
imposing in size, especially on the Pacific Coast. Among the apples in
our markets, also, some of the biggest and most beautiful are the
best to eat.
It cannot be denied that there is something to be said in favor of
"eating with the eyes." Women naturally want the apples and
oranges, the berries and vegetables, and the viands on their tables,
to look pretty and inviting. Nor is there any reason why they should
not have their way. The eye and the palate can be reconciled by
breeding fruits and vegetables that combine good looks with
agreeable flavor.
Luther Burbank has done the world a tremendous service by
originating the luscious fruits and vegetables briefly referred to in
the preceding chapter, but perhaps his greatest achievement is the
demonstration that there is virtually no limit to obtaining fruits of
any size, form, or flavor desired, and that the good looks and flavor
can be amalgamated at pleasure with shipping and keeping qualities.
He himself is preparing many pleasant surprises of this kind beside
those I have referred to, and hundreds of others are profiting by his
example and following his methods.

SCHOOL GIRLS AS PURE FOOD EXPERTS.

Three girls in a Massachusetts Normal School in 1904 accidentally

launched a new kind of pure food movement which is of historic
importance, as it puts to shame the dilatory methods of Federal and
State Governments.
They missed their lessons one day, after feasting at a
surreptitious midnight spread on "strawberry" jam. Their chemistry
professor, Lewis B. Allyn, advised them to analyze a can of the same
preserves to find out what there was in it that could have made
them ill. They did so, and found that the jam contained no
strawberries at all but was made of apple sauce, ether, grass seeds,
red ink, and salicylic acid.
It looked all right; but what is food for the eye is often poison for
the stomach. That was the important lesson this incident was
destined to teach the inhabitants of Westfield, Massachusetts.
Peter Clarke Macfarlane, who tells the whole story graphically in
"Collier's Weekly" for January 11, 1913, writes:
From that day forward the girls in the chemistry class began to qualify as
pure-food experts. They examined the canned goods, the preserves, the
medicines, and foods of every kind that came from the stores of Westfield into
the homes in which they lived. The housekeepers were appalled to find the
sort of thing they had been putting upon their tables. And the grocers were
somewhat appalled, but much more annoyed. It is very disturbing, no doubt,
to have the canned goods you make the most profit on, the ones that bear
the very handsomest lithographs, returned almost in wheelbarrow loads
because of some fussy girls stewing chemicals in a laboratory. I leave it to any
one if it would not be annoying when a grocer is working energetically to
build up trade in a new line of chocolate which he can sell in larger packages
for less money than chocolate was ever sold before to have a miss still
 wearing her hair in braids say right out loud in the store for every one to
hear:
"Pooh! I analyzed that in class. It is thirty per cent. cornstarch. That is why
you can sell it cheaper than real chocolate. And it has potash in it, too, which
turns to suds when you add water, and that's what makes it look so
deliciously creamy and frothy when you pour it into the cups. No suds in my
chocolate, thank you!"

Professor Allyn, under whose guidance this epoch-making

crusade was undertaken—a crusade which should and could be
carried on in every town throughout the country—was elected a
member of the Board of Health. Opportunity was given
housekeepers and all others who suspected foods of being
adulterated, to have them examined by the two hundred schoolgirls
and their professor. The results were placed on exhibition in the
Board of Health Museum. In this way Professor Allyn taught
tradesmen that it does not pay to handle impure goods when once
the public is enlightened as to the difference between what looks
good and what is good.
The Westfield Board of Health now publishes a list of foods which
it considers pure. With that list in hand it is safe to go a-marketing.
Offending manufacturers and dealers have been converted to the old
doctrine that honesty is the best policy, and the plan, altogether, has
worked so well that hundreds of letters have come to the secretary
of the Board of Health, asking "How can we give our town a pure-
food standard like Westfield?"
One of the methods Professor Allyn adopted to teach the
inhabitants of Westfield the folly of "eating with the eyes" was to
buy a can of peas, open it in presence of an audience, and pour in
some hydrochloric acid, a test for copper. Then he inserted a
gleaming butcher knife and when he drew it out a few moments
later it was coated with copper.
Not all dye stuffs used for coloring canned or other foods are as
objectionable as copper, but most of them are undesirable because,
as Dr. Wiley has pointed out, they make it possible to conceal
inferiority of material or lack of freshness. In "Good Housekeeping"
for February, 1913, Dr. Wiley had an article headed "Danger in Vivid
Green Vegetables" in which he pointed out that after a delay of six
years the Remsen Food Board ratified his conclusions that the
sulphate of copper used to give the unnatural bright color to canned
peas, beans, and spinach is injurious to health and should not be
allowed in foodstuffs. "It must have been a bitter pill to swallow," he
adds, "for were they not appointed in the hope that Wiley would be
reversed on all points?"
Another pure-food expert has given an amusing recipe for
making a bottle of maraschino cherries:
"Take a cherry and remove the stone. Get the color out by
holding it over the bleaching fumes of sulphur. Remove a portion of
the fleshy part of the fruit to leave mostly fiber. Then inject some
artificial sweet substance to give it a 'body' and a sugarlike quality.
Dye it with a brilliant red coal tar dye. Put it in a bottle, and sell it to
a greenhorn."
A greenhorn is defined in the dictionary as "a person who is
easily imposed upon." You prove yourself a greenhorn if you go into
a grocery store and buy glasses of preserved fruits and vegetables
dyed in brilliant rainbow hues such as no honest fruit ever exhibits.
You show yourself a greenhorn if you buy canned peaches for their
shape. Peaches picked and halved before they are ripe retain their
shape beautifully. If you want to eat with your eyes buy this kind by
all means. Peaches picked and halved when the sun has ripened
them on the tree have Flavor; this kind is for those who eat with
their mouth.
Many of us are not greenhorns. We would buy more California
peaches in winter if the cans had a label with these words on it:
"These peaches were picked ripe; they may look a little mushy, but
they are much pleasanter to eat than those which are picked unripe
to make them keep their shape. Try them and note the difference."
 Fortunes are in store for canners wise enough thus to recognize
the commercial value of Flavor and to educate the public in this
simple way, as well as by advertising in the newspapers and
magazines. A consumer who has eaten some of the flavorsome ripe
peaches will come back for another can—or a dozen cans—much
sooner than one who has eaten the hard insipid halves of unripe
peaches.

PENNYWISE DEALERS AND PINEAPPLES.

Herbert J. Webber relates in the "Yearbook of the Department of

Agriculture" for 1905 that when the department's pineapple-
breeding experiments were started, the question of what varieties to
cultivate gave considerable trouble. Many growers insisted that the
red Spanish was by far the best variety, because of its adaptability to
open field culture, freedom from disease, and good shipping
qualities. Others contended that "as varieties existed that were of far
better quality and flavor, the market should be educated to demand
these better so-called fancy fruits."
The words I have italicized indicate a difficulty which confronts us
—a problem of vast and national importance, the chief impediment
to our getting the best varieties of fruits, imported as well as
domestic, and of vegetables, too, into our markets. While some
dealers are sufficiently astute to realize that sales are multiplied
tenfold if the best fruits and vegetables are offered, the ruling
majority are so pennywise as to think only of the shipping and
keeping qualities. It is not too much to say that these short-sighted
dealers have entered into a conspiracy to suppress the best varieties
because their greater delicacy and juiciness make them more
perishable.
The story of the pineapple illustrates this point. In the Far South,
where this luscious fruit grows, its fragrance at the time of ripening
pervades the whole neighborhood. In our markets the pineapple's
perfume is so faint that you have to flatten your nose against it
before you get any at all. The reason is that these "pines" not only
are usually of an inferior sort, but that they are picked and shipped
before they are ripe.
Bananas picked green ripen gradually and become sweet. Not so
pineapples. What happens when they are picked unripe is told in a
Bulletin of the Hawaii Agricultural Experiment station (1910) kindly
forwarded to me by one of the officials after I wrote an article on the
subject for the New York "Nation":
A study of the ripening of pineapples has disclosed the fact that the sugar
content of the fruit is derived exclusively from the leaves of the plant and
does not increase after the fruit has been removed from the plant. If
pineapples are picked green and allowed to ripen the sugar content at
complete ripeness is the same as it was when the fruit was removed from the
plants. An analysis of the fruit shows that they contain no substance which
can be changed into sugar during the ripening process. Fruits picked too
green and allowed to ripen, therefore, lack greatly in sugar content and in
flavor. The sugar content of green fruits, or fruits ripened after being picked
too green, is about 2 or 3 per cent., while that of fruits ripened on the plant
ranges from 9 to 15 per cent.

The words in italics give the gist of the matter. "Pines" picked and
shipped unripe never get their full Flavor, and its unique Flavor is the
one thing that makes a pineapple desirable, for its nutritive value is
slight, and sweets and acids can be more conveniently and cheaply
obtained in other ways.
Here is a description of the pineapple at home: "The most
delicious fruit to be found in Brazil is the pineapple. Northerners who
eat this fruit weeks after it has been picked in its green state have
only a faint idea of its sweetness, lusciousness and delicious flavor.
Here the pineapple is picked when the tropical sun has perfected its
chemical work, and the fruit is ready to melt in the mouth. It would
be an affront to nature to sprinkle sugar upon it when sliced. It is
mellow, over-running with juice, and of incomparable flavor."
Luther Burbank has tried to cultivate a "pineapple Flavor" in
other fruits, and when John Burroughs found it in his new
"Patagonia" strawberry, he was much pleased. It is, indeed, such an
exquisite fragrance that one would imagine the importers and
dealers would think of it, above all things, as a bait to allure
purchasers. But no; most of these gentlemen attach, as we have
seen, chief importance to keeping and shipping qualities.
The consequence of this pennywise policy is that about one-tenth
as many pineapples are sold in our markets as would be if the
Commercial Value of Flavor were fully recognized.
The canners, it is instructive to note, have benefited by the
mistake of their competitors. They wait till the fruit is ripe and
flavorsome before they tin it, and that is the reason why the luscious
Hawaiian canned pineapple suddenly sprang into such great favor. In
connection with this fact it is interesting to read Dr. Wiley's
testimony that "canned fruits properly preserved retain their natural
aroma and flavor better than any other form of canned food."
The rapidity with which the public discovered the excellence of
this Hawaiian product indicates that fresh pineapples also will gain
enormously in favor if the dealers will only supply the "fancy" kinds
in abundance and at reasonable prices.
What the enlightened public wants is not only Flavor, but variety
in Flavor. Pomologist William A. Taylor of the United States Bureau of
Plant Industry has penned a maxim which dealers cannot ponder too
much. "Attractive diversity in appearance and quality stimulates a
demand for fruit among consumers." Yet, as another Government
expert attests, "there has for many years been a strong tendency in
the American fruit trade to urge fruit-growers to reduce the number
of varieties in their commercial plantations." The results we see in
our markets. Of the dozens of choice sorts that are described in the
catalogues of nursery and seedsmen only a fraction are offered to
consumers.

SUCCESSFUL PEACH-GROWERS.

The condition into which those pennywise dealers who are

indifferent to Flavor and oppose variety have brought our peach
market is a national disgrace and a gastronomic calamity. Most of
the Southern peaches sent North seem now to be of two or three
kinds and those not of the best. To be sure, it makes little difference
what kinds are sent, for all are equally spoiled by being picked, like
the pineapples, before they are ripe. California peaches melt in the
mouth like ice cream—if eaten in California. In the East they used to
contrast with Atlantic Coast peaches by their leathery consistency
and lack of Flavor, due to the fact that they had to be picked unripe
to stand transportation. To-day they contrast less, because Eastern
peaches also are so usually picked unripe.
In the peach-growing business, under present conditions, "the
proportion of failures to successes is at least as ten to one,"
according to Erwin F. Smith. The proportion might be reversed if this
expert's advice, as given in "Peach-Growing for Market" (Farmers'
Bulletin No. 33), were generally followed by farmers. The most
important point he makes is that the peaches to be marketed
successfully must not only have size, color, and firmness enough to
stand shipment, but also superior flavor.
It was by leaving his peaches on the tree till the sun gave them
that superior flavor that one man I know of became rich. He had an
orchard about twenty miles from New York and when the first crop
had thoroughly ripened he picked a wagonload to take to the city.
He never reached it. Every basket was sold before he had gone a
mile, and all the other loads were thus disposed of to his neighbors,
although he charged the full New York retail prices. The middleman's
usual share of the plunder remained in his own pocket.
What would you think, Mr. Farmer, or Mr. Business-Man-Who-
Wants-to-Live-in-the-Country, of buying a twenty-two-acre tract of
worthless pasture land, putting it into peaches, and getting
therefrom in twelve years a profit of $44,000?
It can be done, and it has been done. The very interesting and
instructive story was told in detail in the Philadelphia "Saturday
Evening Post" of September 10, 1910, by Forrest Crissey. It is the
story of J. H. Hale, of Glastonbury, Connecticut. One day he came
across an old native seedling peach tree, loaded with sweet wild fruit
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