138 TRANSACTIONS OF THE HORTICULTURAL 



necessary things. The man who does this is the one who cries 

 down the country and is saving on every corner, as he thinks, to 

 make enough to shortly rent the farm and move to town. This 

 tendency is the bane of our country. 



Ride over our beautiful prairies and you find a large per cent, of 

 unimproved, bare-looking farms, with a small house, wretched barn, 

 tumbled-down yard fences, land worth thirty or forty dollars an acre; 

 the verdict comes at once, a rented farm, or a farmer tired of the 

 country. Or another condition may prevail. The boys are all grown 

 up and gone in business in the cities, and the old people can't operate 

 the farm alone, so are obliged to rent. These are stubborn facts, 

 and we, as patriotic citizens, deplore them as detrimental to our 

 free institutions, for we are preeminently an agricultural people. 

 When the art of agriculture languishes, our government is weak- 

 ened. Now, there is no sovereign balm for this tendency, but it 

 must be met by thinking people and counteracted by every possible 

 means. 



Education, in its widest sense, covers the whole ground, but 

 the many branches of it shoi^ld be considered separately. The old- 

 time idea that any one can farm is fast losing ground. The farmer 

 is fitted for his work by a training no less careful and rigid than the 

 artisan or the mechanic. 



But I have to speak of a very small, though oi ic 

 lected part of his education, the education of his aesthetic nature, 

 that he may have a desire and know how to decorate his home. 

 Why should his home be decorated? To enhance the value of the 

 property; this applies to any property, but is overlooked more in the 

 rural districts than in cities. Every mother's son before me will 

 readily concede that even as he rides along on the train, he is men- 

 tally forming an estimate of the worth of the property he sees by 

 its appearance, arid a neat lawn makes him conclude that the place 

 is desirable; should there be several pleasant, home-like looking 

 places, he decides that is the locality in which to invest. When 

 candidly asked the reason for his decision, he can give none of the 

 details of drainage, health or social qualities of the locality, but he 

 formed his estimate wholly from appearances. Adornments that 

 truly adorn, always raise the value of any article by making it desir- 

 able. Let " beauty unadorned " be not forgotten in our haste to 

 adorn. 



Most of all, we should adorn to make the farm home attractive 

 for one and all. Children will not naturally leave home when there 

 is any attraction there for them whatever. Alas ! alas ! we mourn 

 the departure of our country boys to the dusty, hurrying, tempting 

 city, but sit with folded hands when asked to stem the tide. 



Again, I say, make the rural home attractive. Why? for the 

 reason that any home should be attractive, that it may be loved and 



