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the towering elm, the mountain ash, the hickory, the butternut, the 

 ■weeping-willow, the locust, the balm of gilead, the evergreen pine, the 

 hemlock, the spruce and the balsam of fir, not forgetting the ordinary 

 house and garden shrubbery and the lady's beautiful flower garden, dec- 

 orated with the peony, the moss, the grass and carnation pink, the 

 beautiful rose, and the thousand other varieties of variegated, blooming 

 flowers, of which the ladies are so fond, and take so much pains to 

 cultivate. Say what you may, this is no useless expenditure. We 

 would rather live in the shady grove, or in the thick dark forest, where 

 we could occasionally pluck a wild blossom, than to dwell in the open 

 fields away from every variety of tree, shrub, plant and flower. These 

 outlays are easily made. A short time each spring and fall, for two or 

 three years, devoted thus to decorating your building grounds, would 

 add thousands to the appearance of your homesteads and immensely to 

 the daily enjoyment of yourselves and your families. It is all well 

 that a large share of your time and your means is devoted to the 

 ordinary operations upon the farm, but you have something else to do 

 besides making money. At least a portion of it should be expended 

 to make comfortable your houses and barns ; to beautify your yards, to 

 adorn your streets, to educate your children, and to promote a good 

 state of society in the immediate vicinity in which you reside. With- 

 out these, of what value are houses and lands or anything else of which 

 you may be possessed ? Men live not simply to make money and be- 

 come rich. If this were so, we should look for none but a world of 

 misers, the most cold-hearted, selfish, and loathsome set of beings in 

 the universe, the fallen spirits in the regions of darkness hardly 

 excepted. We live to enjoy life as we go along, not to idle away our 

 time or to devote our moments to useless expenditure, but to make 

 ourselves and families comfortable, contented and happy. 



As farmers, mechanics and manufacturers, the education of our child- 

 ren should not be neglected. We may bequeath to our children 

 money, we may leave to them our houses and lands ; and, to use a 

 figurative expression, these may all take wings and fly away. Of these, 

 by fraud or some other means, they may be robbed. But if we give 

 them an education, we give them what is sure to be of value to them, 

 and what they can never be dispossessed of. We would say, by all 

 means, so far as your sons are concerned, educate them farmers. Don't 



