Summer Meetins:. ^S- 



THE COW AN ADJU^XT IN HORTICULTURE. 

 (By J. L. Erwin, Steedman, ]Mo.) 



I have puzzled over and over again as to why Bro. Goodman sug- 

 gested that I write a short paper on the cow as an adjunct in Horticul- 

 ture, two subjects that have — as ordinarily understood — about as much 

 affinity as oil and water. JMayhap he thought that a fellow who had 

 gotten up at three o'colck in the morning for twenty-five years to milk 

 the cows and attend to the work of the dairy — Sunday thrown in — 

 would like a job that he could lie abed till five or six o'clock in the morn.- 

 ing, or toast his shins by a warm stove of a blustery winter day while his- 

 trees were sleeping. 



The dairyman dreads the cold march winds ; the horticulturalist re- 

 joices to see them as they hold the fruit buds back for development when 

 there is less danger of frost. 



Job was a dair}-man ; and a first-class optimist when he said 'T washed 

 my steps with butter — and Beaumont had not been discovered — the rocks 

 poured me out rivers of oil."' The good Lord that made us knew that 

 most of us liked to sit in the shade, hence when he started Adam and 

 Eve to housekeeping he taught them Horticulture. Dairying is all right 

 for a young fellow brim full of energy and who must be kept constantly 

 busy or he would be in mischief. I do not know but that to be the wife 

 of a dairyman was a part of the punishment that was meted out to the 

 daughters of Eve for gratifying her curiosity. 



Then it looks, too, as if the Lord intended our closing years to be 

 devoted to Horticulture, for in "the beyond there is a stream as clear as 

 crystal and beside it there is a tree that bears twelve kinds of fruit and 

 yields its fruit every month." 



The Master when he was here went to a fig-tree to get something to 

 eat instead of a dairyman who is rarely able to supply his own family with 

 butter and milk. 



"A land flowing with milk and honey" was the ideal of poetic happi- 

 ness. 



The dairy has many charms. The merry hum of the milkmaid, the 

 soft "Co Boss, Co Boss" and as her big soft eyes look into your in eager 

 expectation of a nubbin or a kindly pat of the hand you feel a thrill of joy. 



When the limbs grow weary and the back stiflr'ens with age you turn 

 to something less severe — shorter hours — more breathing spells. The 

 returns are not quite so regular — frosts, insects, diseases — may cut short 



