How I didn't find this book last year when I had tomato fever I cannot imagine!! It is wonderful. Alexander Livingston was a smart man to get his story down the way he wanted to be remembered. For more posts on Alexander Livingston check my seedsman index.
You can download the book from several sources, in most all formats, in case you want to have it on your reading device.
I'll just pop a brief snippet in here as the reading quality is wonderful when you go to the full size option of the scanned book. What a joy to find a high quality book.
And to think the tomato was to be changed from a pretty but uneaten fruit into one of the most competitively bred food plants in history!
The First Tomato I Ever Saw.
Well do I remember the first tomato I ever saw. I was ten years old, and was running down one of those old-fashioned lanes, on either side of which was the high rail fence, then so familiar to all Ohio people. Its rosy cheeks lighted up one of these fence-corners, and arrested my youthful attention. I quickly gathered a few of them in my hands, and took them to my mother to ask, ''What they were?"
As soon as she saw me with them, she cried out, " You must not eat them, my child. They must be poison, for even the hogs will not eat them." "But what are they, mother?" I asked. “Some call them 'Jerusalem Apples;' others say they are 'Love Apples;' but, now mind, you are not to eat them. You may go and put them on the mantel, they are only fit to be seen for their beauty."