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PLEASANT TALK
ABOUT
FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING.
BY
HENRY WARD BEECHER.
_NEW EDITION_,
WITH ADDITIONAL MATTER FROM RECENT WRITINGS,
PUBLISHED AND UNPUBLISHED.
[Illustration: Printer’s Logo]
NEW YORK:
J. B. FORD AND COMPANY.
1874.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873,
BY J. B. FORD AND COMPANY,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
UNIVERSITY PRESS: WELCH, BIGELOW, & CO.,
CAMBRIDGE.
PREFATORY.
The Preface to the first edition of this volume, which follows these
few words, will give some idea of the book’s origin. Much of the
material is of only passing importance, and is retained now rather
from retrospective interest. A considerable addition has been made,
however, consisting of articles contributed to Mr. Bonner’s _New York
Ledger_, bearing upon rural affairs, and also an unpublished address
upon _The Apple_. This was delivered at Iona Island, on a fair summer
day, when ladies and gentlemen, several score,—editors, pomologists,
singers, preachers, poets, and inventors,—gathered under Dr. C. W.
Grant’s hospitable trees,—for the house was too small to hold them,—to
eat apples and pears, to discuss grapes solid and liquid, and to
listen to the venerable poet, Mr. Bryant, to Horace Greeley, to
Charles Downing, and to notable songsters, whose warbles put the birds
to envious silence,—at any rate, so the compliments ran at the time.
The address had better luck at Iona than its great subject did in
Paradise; though it will never give rise to such a literature of
results.