SECRETARY'S PORTFOLIO. 393 



corner in front or beside the house, where she can grow a few flowers — pretty 

 emblems and tender reminders of a happy girlhood. She would grow them 

 here that her new home may prosper with the peace, love, and contentment 

 which their beauty and fragrance betoken. Alas for her dreams ! No enclos- 

 ure protecting the door-yard as it always should, therefore none of the pleasant 

 ornamentation of lawn, shrubbery and flower bed. Some stray cattle browsed 

 off the tender leaves of her plants, and that bane of the farm-yard society, and 

 curse of the table provender, some unregenerate hogs in their deep rootings 

 after knowledge their brains will never contain, nor their meat nourish the 

 body of man, have spread devastation in this restful pleasure ground of the 

 wife's diversion. How often we disregard the "external fitness of things." 

 Frequently the house looks out upon the cattle-yard, and many times the mul- 

 tifarious odors from a too convenient pig-sty regale the senses, as you would en- 

 joy the cool breezes on the front porch at noon or in the evening. Again as 

 evidenced by a total disregard of the topography of the grounds as suitable for 

 building purposes : 



The barns situated on a commanding rise of ground, and the house a couple 

 of hundred feet distant on a lower level — thus rendering impurity of water 

 liable, and damp and unhealthy cellars common sources of contagion. Again, 

 perhaps the house is buried in foliage. If ''paint costs nothing," sunshine 

 costs less, though a finer pigment and allied to cheerfulness. The house dark, 

 damp, and cheerless, and the atmosphere of the home in keeping. And yet 

 avoid the other extreme, no shade, no trees ; the broiling sun in the summer 

 bakes it, the wintry winds, whistling, play a requiem to the happy name of 

 home. We dwell upon these errors, sure that they arise from a too severe 

 practicality ; from a narrow and unenlightened view of life and its requirements. 



AN OBJECTIONABLE PRACTICE. 



To our view, the beauty of the surroundings of many country homes is 

 seriously marred by the very common practice of cutting off the lower 

 branches of the trees so as to expose a bare trunk from eight to fifteen feet in 

 hight or more. This is especially detrimental to the appearance of evergreen 

 trees, whose beauty in a great measure depends upon a full growth of their 

 lower foliage, even though it rests upon the ground. Deciduous trees, however, 

 when thus cut up, have the look of being held up in the air, while the grounds 

 are robbed of that shady, verdant fullness, which is so essential a part of land- 

 scape beauty. A forest viewed at a distance is grand. The tall, naked trunks 

 are in keeping with its extent. But to those who seek the woods for pleasant 

 walks, the smaller trees, the shrubs, the undergrowth, and not the tall trees, 

 are the immediate objects of interest. To cut off the lower brauches of trees 

 is to remove the tree out of — above the lawn, while the rude stems are alone 

 left for ornament. — Rural New Yorker. 



ROADSIDE TREES. 



Our opponents say that shade along the public roads tends to keep them 

 constantly wet and muddy ; that the roots take too much nourishment from 

 the adjoining fields, beside other minor objections. So, too, the farmer who 

 dislikes orchards as shading good ground, and that robs the owner of so much 





