LUTHER BURBANK

WIZARDRY IN PLANT BREEDING

BY GEORGE WHARTON JAMES

HE year 1849 was a

THE

memorable year in

California history. It was the year of the great influx of the gold pioneers from all parts of the world, and it was also the year of the birth of Luther Burbank,

He first saw light in Lancaster, Worcester County, Massachusetts, March 7, in that memorable year. He was the thirteenth (lucky number) of fifteen children, born to Samuel Walton Burbank by three marriages. He came to California in 1875,-deliberately chose it as his future home, and ever since then has been in every sense of the word a true and devoted Californian.

In his earliest years Luther Burbank was a quiet, shy lad, making playmates of plants rather than of other children. His doll-strange prophecy-was a cactus plant, fondly carried about until an accident shattered the plant and a young heart at one operation.

As a boy he was put to work in the shops of the Ames Plow Company. Though he longed for the open air,

and the companionship of the trees, the plants, the flowers, the clouds, the sky and the free open, such was his conception of duty that he suppressed all his longings and doubly concentrated his mind with deliberate purpose upon the work he was set to do.

When the time came, however, Burbank gladly left the shops for the fields, discovered his vocation and the Burbank potato, and soon thereafter circum stances, not gold, forced him to California.

He reached Santa Rosa in 1875. Then misfortune came to him in the shape of illness, which quickly robbed him of his small hoard of dollars. He was glad to take refuge in an empty chicken-house, and accept whatever odd jobs he could get. One day, as I drove with him from Santa Rosa to his proving grounds at Sevastopol, we passed a buggy driven by a man who responded very elaborately to Mr. Burbank's friendly nod and simple salutation. After we had passed, with a whimsical smile upon his face, he turned to me and said: "I never see that man but I am reminded of an incident of those days of my poverty and distress, when I was glad to do anything that came to hand. One day I heard that that man was building a house. I went to him and asked him for the job of shingling it. He asked me what I would do it for. The regular price was two dollars and a half a thousand, but I was so anxious for the work that I offered to do it for one

dollar and seventy-five cents. 'All right,' he said, 'come and begin to-morrow.' But I had no shingling hammer and all the cash I had in the world was seventy-five cents, which I at once expended in purchasing the necessary hammer. Next morning when I reached the job, my new hammer in hand all ready to go to work, I was surprised and-what shall I say-dismayed, to find another man already at work, while the owner calmly came to me and said: 'I guess you'll have to let that job go, as this man here has undertaken to do it for one dollar a thousand.'

"How disappointed I was! I had spent my last cent, had a hammer that was no use to me now, and no job. But I kept a stiff upper lip and work soon eame, and I've never been quite so hard up since."

Harwood, in speaking of this period of Burbank's life, graphically says: "The man who was to become the foremost figure in the world in his line of work, and who was to pave the way by his own discoveries and creations for others of all lands to follow in his footsteps, was a stranger in a strange land, close to starvation, penniless, beset by disease, hard by the gates of death. And yet never for an instant did this heroic figure lose hope, never did he abandon confidence in himself, nor once did he swerve from the path he had marked out. In the midst of all he kept an unshaken faith. He accepted the trials that came,

not as a matter of course, not tamely, nor with any mock heroics, but as a passing necessity. His resolution was of iron, his will of steel, his heart of gold; he was fighting in the splendid armor of a clean life.'

Slowly he regained his health, doing odd jobs as he was able, and at last had money enough to secure a small plot of ground, begin a nursery, and at the same time, carry out the plan formed years ago, become an improver and creator.

Yet, in all his experimenting he was innately modest. There was no blare of trumpets. Note this well, young men and women. He went his own way; followed the vision that he alone saw; but he did it reverently, respectfully, modestly. There were no loud declarations as to the ignorance of the horticulturalists of the past; no open defiance of the horticulturalists of the present; but simply a quiet, calm, silent, modest sailing of his own ship over the unknown sea. Too often the young want to do as Burbank did, but they spoil their lives by the blatancy of their methods, the immodesty of their self-conceit, and the rudeness of their criticisms of those whose lives have demonstrated that they were real benefactors to the race.

Note well, then, his modesty when he began his work, and also when, success attained, that work brought him world-wide fame, honor, wealth, and the plaudits of the great minds of earth. When I first

visited him in his home, this was the earliest impression I received. As I then wrote:

"Though honored by kings and princes, by scientists and leaders of men the world over, he is the simplest kind of man at home. There is none of the haughtiness, or pride, or self-conceit that would have taken possession of a smaller man, and that would have shown itself in his daily intercourse with his subordinates. While they all revere and respect him, honor and obey him, they all feel his simplicity of character, the pure democratic soul within him, and one and all speak to him, and of him, in the everyday name of 'Boss." But it is when you hear the sweet intonation of the voices of the maids in the house and the men in the fields as they thus speak, that you feel and comprehend the friendliness of the man.

"His neighbors in Santa Rosa (where he lives) and Sevastopol (where his testing grounds are), and on the seven-mile drive thither, have the same warm, kindly, democratic feeling towards him, and he responds as cheerily to the salutation of the wood-hauler and the potato-digger as he does to that of the banker or railway magnate, and we met all kinds as we drove from Santa Rosa to Sevastopol and back."

Here is an unspoiled king, the true democrat, the man who actually lives his belief in the brotherhood of man. Here is no false dignity, no pomp, no cere