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All this time Luther had followed a rather old
practice. At least it seemed odd to his friends and it
was very annoying to his mother. In a field of corn,
daisies, peas, or raspberries, whenever he found one
plant that was extra large and healthy, he would mark
it. When it went to seed, Luther would carefully keep
that seed away from the common stock and plant it
in a separate place. What made the habit annoying
to his mother was that when Luther had no string in
his pocket to tie around the plant, he would pull out
his shirttail, tear off a strip and tie that on his chosen
stalk. This habit was the start of Luther's fame and
fortune, for that is how he marked the potato seed ball
which yielded the Burbank potato.
After the Burbank potato was successful, Luther
sold his farm. He was too eager to see what he could
do with new plants but had to wait a whole year for
each crop. He had heard that in California he could
raise three crops in year. So he bought a ticket to
California, kissed his mother and sister goodbye, and
set out for the new land. He was twenty-six years
old. In California, Luther looked about for a place to
settle down and go to work. He had just ten dollars.
ten potatoes and the suit he was wearing when he
arrived in Santa Rosa Valley, eighty kilometers north
of San Francisco. For some time the young man had
to work at odd jobs in order to eat. He did carpentry
work, ran errands, and even cleaned chicken coops.
But he did not become discouraged. Finally, he found
the kind of work that suited him best, helping in a
greenhouse. Though the pay was very small, he saved
all he could, economizing in every way, until he had
enough money to buy himself a small plot of ground
in Santa Rosa. He started his own nursery business.
The first year he made a profit of only $15, but he
was happy in his work. Then a bit of luck came his
way. A man named Dutton wanted twenty thousand
prune trees within nine months, and no nursery in
the vicinity could supply them. Luther accepted the
order. He then began to wonder how he would fulfil
it. There must be some way, and he would find it.
At last he worked out a plan based on his boyhood
experiments in the grafting and budding of trees. He
bought twenty thousand fine almonds and planted
them, as he had once planted his corn. He knew that
almond trees grow much faster than prune trees.
When the almonds sprouted, he transplanted them
into a special plot of ground. By the end of June, he
had a miniature forest of almond seedlings.
Then Luther bought twenty thousand prune buds
from a farmer whose prune trees were strong and
healthy. He grafted these prune buds onto the almond
seedlings. Then he partly broke off the almond tree tops
so they would not grow any more and all the sap would
go to the prune buds. When Mr. Dutton came for his
twenty thousand prune trees that fall, Luther was ready
to deliver them. Dutton was amazed. He said Luther
was a wizard. This name stuck to him, though he did
not particularly like it. But to the general public 'wizard'
seemed a good name for a man who, as the years went
by developed a thornless cactus, a white blackberry,
an apple tree that bore five or more different kinds of
apples at one time, a perfumed calla lily, and thousand
of other strange and wonderful plants.
For a while Luther was happy at his work in the
nursery. But the nursery business took too much of his time. He wanted to breed new plants, not just raise
seeds. So he sold the nursery and bought four acres
of land where he started his real life work. There was
so much he wanted to do that he arose early and went
to bed late. Luther had help, of course, but no other
person in the world could see with his eyes or feel
with his fingers. Those eyes and fingers could tell
from a seedling what the adult tree would be like and
what kind of fruit it would bear. No one else had this
power, so he had to do most of the work himself.
Sometimes his work was actually painful such as
his experiments with the cactus. He started to wear
gloves but they slowed him down so much that he
stripped them off and worked barehanded among the
prickly plants. Sometimes his hands and arms and
face would be torn and bleeding, his fingers burning
with the plain of the cactus spikes. But he never let
such things slow him down. He was trying to produce
a thornless cactus, and he succeeded. It took twenty
years of hard work.
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Based on the passage given, write
a summary in which you describe
* how Luther started his nursery
business
* why he sold his nursery
although he was successful
* his work at the new land
Credit will be given for use of
own words but care must be taken not to change the original meaning. Your
summary must be in continuous form and not longer than 130 words,
including the 10 words given below.
Begin your summary as follows :
"Luther saved enough money
to buy himself a plot of ..." |
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Luther saved enough money to buy himself a plot of land and
started his nursery business. He was happy with the small profit. His break
came when Mr. Dutton ordered twenty thousand prune trees to be delivered
within nine months. Luther knew almond trees grow faster than prune trees.
he grafted healthy prune buds onto almond seedlings. In this way, he managed
to deliver Mr. Dutton's order. he came to be known as 'wizard' for his work.
His business flourished. However, it was time-consuming and he wanted to
breed new plants, not just to raise seeds. After selling the nursery, he
bought four acres of land to carry out the work of breeding new plants. With
painstaking work for twenty years, he finally succeeded in developing a
thornless cactus. ( 129 words ) |
