, because he has jowls and dewlaps and he is too
fat, but he is a very fine man; beautiful, clear, honest eyes, he has,
and I hope to have him consider the planting of nut trees on his place.
He has a disgraceful looking place in comparison to mine.

This year my place is just loaded down with nuts, except filberts. Last
year I had so many filberts that I have half a ton left over yet. And I
want to see people beautify the country. I started off one day with a
thought that came to my head. I heard that there were a half a million
widows and orphans buried in the Hudson Hill Cemetery. And I thought:
Why, those dead people can be working; they can be doing something. Let
them feed the roots of the Japanese heartnut. And as a try, I sent them
1100 seeds just as a start. And the Japanese heartnut, a stranger to
this country, isn't anywhere near any other nut, and it grows true to
form, and a lot of the trees are much hardier up on Lake Ontario. It
does not grow well on the north of the lake, but south of the lake it
grows enormous crops every year, and the nuts come out whole. But there
is a better shaped nut without that kind of groove in the center, and
it's the father or the mother--father, probably--of the finest heartnuts
in the world, and there is nothing that beats a heartnut for eating.
Every time I sell heartnuts to eat I have ruined myself, because they
won't eat any other nut. So that shows just exactly what the general
public thinks of it. Even Italians. There I have a half a ton of
filberts. I bring the heartnuts down to Florida, the Fairchild and my
hybrid trees and butternuts and Japanese heartnuts, and I have a package
of almonds and another package of brazil nuts, and I let them taste
those. They are woody in comparison to our heartnuts and hybrids. They
are not anything, they are just like so much wood in comparison.

Now, I have received from John W. Fowler, Secretary to Albert Williams
of the Department of Corrections on 100 Center Street. New York, a
beautiful letter accepting those nuts, and I had my housekeeper--I was
down in Florida--send them to them early in February, and they are
planted. And the breezes going up and down the Hudson are going to wave
the two-foot-long leaves of the most beautiful deciduous trees in the
world, the Japanese heartnut, healthiest, hardiest nut in the world,
and these dead people will be feeding them. Just think! five thousand
children without a name or number. Now, th