42 Wisconsin State Horticultural Society. 



The mind that is -within us, so impress 

 With quietness, and beauty, and so feed 

 With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, 

 Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, 

 Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all 

 The dreary intercourse of daily life 

 Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb 

 Our cheerful fiith that all that we behold 

 Is full of blessings." 



Beecher and Greeley, Parker and Alcott, and a host of other 

 large-brained men have said that they considered it the best part 

 of an education to have been born and brought up in the country. 

 Some writer has said that " if there is a room in every farmer's 

 house where the work of the family is done, there should be'a 

 room in every farmer's house where the family should live ; 

 where beauty should appeal to the eye ; where genuine comfort of 

 appointments should invite to repose; where books should be 

 gathered; where neatness and propriety of dress should be ob- 

 served, and where labor may be forgotten. The life here should 

 be labors exceeding great reward. A family living like this, and 

 there are families that live thus, will ennoble and beautify all 

 their surrounding?. There will be trees at their door, and flowers 

 in their garden, and pleasant and architectural ideas in their 

 dwellings. Human life will stand in the foreground of such a 

 home. Human life, crowned with its dignities and graces, while 

 animal life will be removed among the shadows, and the gross 

 material utilities, tastefully disguised, will be made to retire in an 

 unoffending and harmonious perspective." 



However mean and humble life in the country may be, meet it 

 and live it, and love it, and study ways and means to make the 

 children love it. Teach them to interest themselves in every- 

 thing about them. Train their eyes to see and their ears to hear, 

 and listen occasionally with them in the twilight of the morning 

 to the first bird's call, far, far away, to the answering voices 

 nearer, until hill and dale echoes and re-echoes with earth's 

 sweetest melody. And, as you listen in this enchanted hour, 

 view with them the sun as it silently rises in the east, painting a 

 picture of wonderful beauty where before all was darkness and 



desolation. 



" Can Imagination boast, 

 Amid its gay creation, hues like this ? " 



