Identifier: autobiographyofh00gree (find matches)
Title: The autobiography of Horace Greeley : or, Recollections of a busy life: to which are added miscellaneous essays and papers
Year: 1872 (1870s)
Authors: Greeley, Horace, 1811-1872
Subjects:
Publisher: New York : E.B. Treat
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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toes; but which, being laid down tograss, utterly refused to respond, deeming itself better adaptedto the growth of sorrel, milk-weed, or mullein. The potatoyielded more bounteously then than it does now, and wasfreely grown to be fed into pork; but I reckon that Indiancorn cost treble, if not quadruple, the labor per bushel thatour Western friends now give for it; while wheat yieldedmeagrely and was a very uncertain crop. Eye and oats didmuch better, and were favorite crops to seed down upon; rye and Indian were the bases of the farmers staff of life;and, when well made, no bread is more palatable or whole- RURAL NEW ENGLAND FIFTY YEARS AGO. 37 some. The liop culture was then common in our section;and, though fearfully hazardous, — there being no yield oneyear and no price the next, — was reckoned inviting and pro-ductive. My father estimated hops at ten cents per poundas profitable a crop as corn at one dollar per bushel. My father bought and removed to this farm early in 1808 ;
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The cot where I was born, here his first two children died; here I was born (February3, 1811), and my only surviving brother on the 12th of June,1812. The house — a modest, framed, unpainted structureof one story — was then quite new; it was only modifiedin our time by filling up and making narrower the old-fash-ioned kitchen fireplace, which, having already devoured allthe wood on the farm, yawned ravenously for more. Thisdwelling faces the road from the north on a bench, or narrowplateau, about two thirds down the hill; the orchard of naturalfruit covers two or three acres of the hillside northeast of thehouse, with the patch of garden and a small frog-pond between. 38 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE. It seemed to me that sweeter and more spicy apples grew inthat neglected orchard than can now be bought in market;and it is not a mere notion that most fruits attain their highestand best flavor at or near the coldest latitude in which theycan be grown at all. That orchard was not you

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