TKANSACTIONS OF WARSAW HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



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where he fished, the green fields where he chased butterflies, the deep forest where he 

 used to wander after nuts, the vine-clad porch of the cottage where he was born, the 

 great kitchen with its ample fire-place; all come back in old age with the vividness of 

 childhood, and in second childhood he again lives over his youth. Thus the more 

 pleasant will be the future remembrance of infant days. Unfortunately the remembrance 

 of all cannot be of bubbling brooks, green fields and shadowy groves. The orchard 

 with its ripe fruits, the garden with its state of vegetable wealth does not invite the city 

 child to pluck and eat, yet there are few but have their holidays in the country with 

 loving friends, and to these the associations must be doubly sweet; yet it is a singular 

 fact that in old age the mind of the child reared in cities seldom reverts to these holi- 

 days. They are but the impression of a day, and come and go like a fleeting cloud 

 before the sun. 



Do we really appreciate as we ought, when we have the country always before us ? 

 I think I may say we. For the last forty-one years I have lived near, and have seen 

 grow up the great city of the West. For the last nine years my daily labor has been in 

 that city. Yet I have never had my home there. When the labors of the day are over 

 1 joyfully go to my country home, and always find content. 



To the age of sixteen 1 was raised in a city, and near to the greatest city on the 

 continent; yet in my youth I was always, when leisure allowed, wandering in the fields, 

 and the most pleasant reminiscences I have of my youth are the days I spent on the 

 farms of friends near by my home. They seem yet to me like gala days to be marked, 

 as did the ancient Romans their pleasant days, with a white stone. 



We all love our homes; we always seek to make them as pleasant for our families 

 and children as possible. Yet few of matured age are even able to reach their ideal, 

 and few children appreciate as they should the efforts made by kind and enlightened 

 parents for their happiness. My ideal is that each should have something to do that is 

 pleasant, so far as labor is concerned, and there is no reason why it should not be pleasant, 

 or in other words, we should make necessary labor a pleasure. The child should be 

 early taught that all labor is honorable, and idleness only is disgrace. Do I mean by 

 this that there should be nothing but work for our youth ? Yes, nothing ; absolutely 

 nothing but work, and rest. What is play but work ? Nothing else, and hard work 

 too, as hard as is necessary for youth, and calling into active exertion every sinew and 

 muscle of the body, and tiring the dear creatures out, so that when they lie down at 

 night their sleep, like the sweet sleep of the just, is forgetfulness of all, save breathing; 

 deep, innocent dreamless sleep. The child must be taught, else it can never in this 

 day compete with others when grown to man's or woman's estate. 



When I was a boy study was the hardest kind of work. Even that now is changed 

 to play. For we have models and blocks to teach the alphabet, pictures to illustrate 

 graphically written lessons in geography and histoiy; and now we have object lessons, 

 so that much of the rough edge is taken away from figures and even grammar. Dry 

 old grammar may be made pleasant. The child grows up nowadays an<i graduates, he 

 hardly knows how. Invention has done as much for the youth as for the man. In my 

 ichool-boy days it was hard drilling — study, study, study, committing to memory — storing 

 up a routine in the mind, to be released in after years, when the stern realities of life must 

 be encountered. 



Why let them make play of our labor in youth ? Teach the child to be a gardener. 

 Give the boy a garden of his own, however small, in which to employ his leisure, and 

 if he produces anything pay him for it. See how ambition will take hold of him, and 

 how quickly he will produce something to add to the enjoyments of the table. Instruct 

 him in grafting and planting, and let him rear a choice tree, a vine and small-fruits of 

 his own. Pretty soon he will be instructed in botany and in entomology, and learn 

 more of noxious and beneficial plants, and noxious and beneficial insects, than from 

 years of study in books alone. Buy a few choice seeds, plants and bulbs for the 

 daughters of the household, and if they rear a surplus let them dispose of it as they will. 

 It will teach them many lessons that in after life may be useful in making other homes 

 happy and pleasant. A taste for experimentation will follow, and after generations, as 

 they come and go, will reap the benefit of a love of the study into cause and effect. I 

 would have the rudiments of botany, entomology, chemistry, in short the rudiments of 



