"From Baltimore, Miss," was the reply. "You know they ripen there two weeks earlier than here. It is farther south, the climate is warmer, and they come here on the railroad until the price falls so low as to make it unprofitable to send them. But they are a small, poor berry, not equal to yours, and will not be in your way. When yours come to market, these will be all gone. People buy these only because they can get no better ones." Here was a mountain of discouragement removed at once. I had not been forestalled by a neighbor, but only anticipated by some one who had taken advantage of a warmer climate. Besides, the widow repeated her cheering assurance of the year before, that she could readily dispose of all I might have,--not, however, at the high prices she then was getting, because the same sun that was to ripen mine would ripen those of all others around me, and bring them into market at the same time; but if mine should be better than others, she would be able to secure better prices for them. I went home to breakfast with a lighter heart, and that day at the factory made up for the deficiencies of the preceding. But since then, after the experience of an entire season, I have looked carefully into this matter of the importance of being first in the market, and I find it runs through and influences almost every department of horticulture which is pursued as a source of gain. The struggle everywhere appears to be for precedence. The horticultural world knows that there is a waiting community of consumers who stand impatient for the advent of the first ripened fruits. It knows that with these the price occasions no hesitancy in the purchase: they are able to pay. Hence no resource of art or skill is left unpractised to minister to a craving appetite that yields a reward so golden. One producer erects hot-houses, into which he crowds the plants that otherwise would be hybernating, and, creating an artificial summer, stimulates the strawberry into bloom, then into fruit, even in the depth of winter the ripened berries are seen at some of the most celebrated fruit-stores. They command fabulous prices,--a spoonful of them readily bringing a dollar, without the demand being supplied. The rich always have money to spend; and though the world is never without its poor, yet it seems also to be never without an abundance of those who have more than they can wisely dispose of. This branch of horticulture must be profitable, as it is rapidly extending in the neighborhood of all our large cities. These hot-house fruits are the earliest in the market.