SOCIETY OF CENTEAL ILLINOIS. 115 



Such is the work that organizations of this kind are called upon 

 to do. Have we not then a mission? Is it not a high and noble one? 

 Shall we refuse to lend our bumble aid, though it may require some 

 personal sacrifice, to press forward the car of rural progress? Nay, 

 verily, let us patiently teach the beautiful gospel of horticulture 

 till every farmer's home is made pleasant and home-like, surrounded 

 with trees, shrubs and flowers, till every farmer's table is constantly 

 supplied with delicious, health-giving fruit and vegetables, till the 

 young people of the farm are made to appreciate their advantages, 

 and to realize that their opportunities for health, long life, honor 

 and usefulness are superior to those of their city cousins, and the old 

 people are made to see the error of their ways and turn aside from 

 the treadmill round of labor they have so long pursued, and spend 

 their declining years in the pleasant home they have created, which 

 should be but the vestibule to that fair home that lies but just 

 across the river, which, through the gates ajar, the Revelator gives 

 us a transporting glimpse. 



Some one has well said that "horticulture cooperates with 

 religion, education and moral culture." That this is true, I think na 

 one will question. Can not every lady and gentleman present point- 

 to communities where a tree, or shrub, or rose bush can scarcely be 

 seen about the house, where a flower never appears in the window 

 or a vine upon the wall, where the miserable excuse for a garden 

 is overgrown with weeds and the few apple trees in the last stages of 

 decay, and the delicious, refreshing fruits that grow so readily in our 

 climate are as rare as those of the tropics? Is it not true that in 

 a community of this kind the school-house is unshaded, unprotected 

 and uucared for, the church neglected and the moral status of the 

 people at a low ebb. 



You have all seen the other side of the picture. Communities 

 where the homes were pleasant, the houses convenient and tastily 

 surrounded with a lawn, carefully planted with suitable trees, 

 while in the back-ground may be seen the orchard, fruit and veget- 

 able garden, and near the house the girls are provided with a dainty 

 little flower garden where they are encouraged to grow all manner 

 of hardy plants and flowers; where the table is supplied with the 

 delicious strawberry, the refreshing grape and melting pear and all 

 kinds of the more common fruits and all the garden vegetables in 

 their season. Where a vase of roses fills the house with fragrance, 

 and, even during the chill December days, the plants in the windows 

 shed beauty and fragrance all about them. 



A community like this will ever cherish the school-house and 

 church as their richest heritage, and will make pleasant and comfort- 

 able the places where the seeker after knowledge and the humble 

 worshipper will delight to tarry. The dwellers in such a community 

 will stand on a higher moral and intellectual plane than where these 



