11. Burbank, Fairy Godfather of the Orchards

This is the story of a boy with a magic wand who has made everything he touched more beautiful and more useful. Even when a little baby, he would hold flowers in his hands for hours, never harming them. He loved flowers best of all—better than pets or animals or playthings; better than anything else in the world except his dear mother with her loving, smiling eyes. He and his mother were chums. His father loved books, but his mother loved flowers. While Luther Burbank loved beautiful thoughts from books, like his father, the flowers, trees, and plants that his mother loved, attracted him to the fields and orchards. All the time he longed to help nature. He wondered if he could make weeds useful and make more and better potatoes grow in each hill. He planted the potato-seed ball, watched it, picked it up when the dog knocked it down and, after a great deal of work he had the delicious Burbank potato.

Then, taking the little field-daisy that he found growing by the roadside, he sent to Japan for daisies from that land, and planted the two together. The bees carried the pollen from one flower to another, and after a long time there was the beautiful Shasta Daisy, which is named for Mount Shasta that is within sight of Mr. Burbank’s home.

He is the fairy godfather of the orchards, for he waves his magic wand, and year after year his trees bear finer fruit—sweeter oranges, better plums, larger apricots; and the world is richer for his work.

He teaches the men who help him his magic. They grow tender-eyed, and their fingers are quick and gentle as they plant the tiny seeds, set the tender grafts, and nurse the little frail flower-stalks. He is now a rich man, but he was not always so. When he first left his home in Massachusetts to go to California, he could get no work, and he was often hungry. At last he got a place in a hothouse doing the work he loved—tending flowers and plants. But the poor boy had no money for a room, and had to sleep in the plant-house. But this place was so damp he grew ill, and a poor woman, seeing that he was ill because he did not have the right kind of food, made him drink a pint of milk from her one cow every day. Luther was afraid he might never be able to pay her back, but when he got better and was able to work he paid the good woman for the milk.

When people saw what a wonderful boy Luther Burbank really was, he had more than he could do. He saved his money, bought a little farm, and began to invent wonderful ways of doing things. Later he bought a great nursery, where he loved to experiment with plants and berries and vegetables. He took the prickly, ugly cactus growing in the desert, scratching the hands and tearing the clothes, and caused it to shed its thorns and to put forth flowers and fruit that is good for man and beast. No wonder he is called the “Fairy Godfather of the Orchards,” this man with the smiling blue eyes, loving boys and girls next after the flowers, and loving his mother best of all. What is the magic wand of the “Flower Magician”? It is “Patient Toil”!