Page:Famous Living Americans, with Portraits.djvu/94

 LUTHER BURBANK 75 fertile but unimproved valley lying between two spurs of the Coast Range Mountains in California before he settled in Santa Rosa. The country was new, the settlers few, and Mr, Burbank had hard work in getting an occasional odd job. The story is told of his spending the last of his money for a shingling hatchet on the strength of a promised job that did not materialize. His first steady employment was on a chick- en ranch. The work was not to his liking, and the pay very small, but he was willing to do anything that would help him to the realization of his ideal. Even then Mr. Burbank saw the wonderful possibilities of this land of everlasting sun- shine. After suffering nearly aU the hardships that can be heaped on man without forcing him across the Great Divide, he succeeded, by superhuman work and by saving every penny earned, in securing a small plot of ground. Here he estab- lished the nursery which was to become famous throughout the world — the Luther Burbank Experiment Farm of to-day, and the present home of The Luther Burbank Society. One of Mr. Burbank 's first achievements after he was set- tled on his own ** little half-acre** was to fill an order for twenty thousand plum trees to set out. It was a hurry-up order. The customer was going to start a prune ranch and did not want to wait two and a half years for the trees to grow; so the order must be filled in nine months. Luther Burbank filled the order; and to-day one of the finest prune orchards in the world stands as a monument to this Burbank achievement. But Luther Burbank 's is not a commercial mind. No man could put his hours, his enthusiasm, and his almost infinite patience into any work which produced only money. His passing years have not been spent in gathering wealth for himself, but in opening up nature's vast store-houses for hu- manity. While he worked in his garden with hoe and spade he worked with Darwin and other scientists in the quiet of the living-room at the homestead : so that now his recorded work at the close of a busy life of deep thought and never-tiring investigation is a ^ ^ rare combination, " as an admirer has said,
 * of the great truths observed by Darwin, Mendel, and De