Plums


  PLUMS.



NOW we are going to tell you something about plums that we want you to be sure to remember.

The plum is a hardy fruit; by this we mean that it will grow in almost any kind of climate. There are a great many kinds of plums; the latest catalogues say that there are about two hundred and seventy-four. 

Damascus was formerly celebrated for this fruit, and the many kinds known as damson, probably originally came from there.

A large number of choice sorts, which are of great size and beauty, have originated in the United States. The chief uses of the plum are for dessert, for drying, and for preserving in syrups.

When a person wants a plum orchard, he sows the nuts or stones of any free-growing kinds, and when they are two years old buds them with choicer sort  The wood of the plum, especially of the wild species, is hard and bears a polish; but it is apt to crack, and for this reason it is chiefly used for handles to tools, and for walkingsticks. 




COMFORT FOR DULL BOYS.


DON'T be discouraged. Slow growth is often sure growth. Some minds are like Norwegian pines. They are slow in growth, but they are striking their roots deep. 

Some of the greatest men have been dull boys. Dryden and Swift were dull as boys; so was Goldsmith, so was Sir Walter Scott. Napoleon, at school, had so much difficulty in learning his Latin, that the master said it would need a gimlet to get a word into his head. Douglas Jerrold was so backward in his boyhood, that at nine he was scarcely able to read. Isaac Barrow, one of the greatest divines the Church of England has ever produced, was so impenetrably stupid in his early years that his father more than once said that if God took away any of his children he hoped it would be Isaac, as he feared he would never be fit for anything in this world. Yet that boy was the genius of the family.




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