This book was recommended to me recently and I was delighted to find it is available on Project Gutenberg. You can follow this link to Roe's "Success with Small Fruits" on Project Gutenberg.
I have only read a few chapters so far, and the philosophical outlook (pre-1900) has been making it more entertaining than informative for me. I'm sure there will be more information as I get into chapters on cultivation and varieties. Here are some of my favorite quotes so far:
"In June, of all months, in sultry July and August, there arises from innumerable country breakfast tables the pungent odor of a meat into which the devils went but out of which there is no proof they ever came. From the garden under the windows might have been gathered fruits whose aroma would have tempted spirits of the air."
"There is one form of gambling or speculation that, within proper limits, is entirely innocent and healthful—the raising of new seedling fruits and the testing of new varieties."
"...let no one imagine that horticulture is the final resort of ignorance, indolence, or incapacity, physical or mental. Impostors palm themselves off on the world daily; a credulous public takes poisonous nostrums by the ton and butt; but Nature recognizes error every time, and quietly thwarts those who try to wrong her, either wilfully or blunderingly."
"Anything can be raised from a farm easier than a mortgage."
"The number of people, however, with the digestion of an ostrich, is enormous, and in multitudes of homes Wilsons [a commercial variety of strawberry], even when half-ripe, musty, and stale, are devoured with unalloyed delight, under the illusion that they are strawberries."
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