How TO Teach Horticulture. 1G3 



these pamphlets all over the state of Michigan, and we also 

 made such arrangements that we could deliver to any school 

 different kinds of flower seeds upon the condition that the 

 schools should plant and care for them and report upon 

 their success. In this way we succeeded in stirring up quite 

 an interest in the subject. We worked and carried on our 

 nurseries for three years, not being helped at all by the state 

 teachers' association, and we got somewhat tired. Horticul- 

 turists will get tired. As I go over the state I occasionally 

 meet teachers who tell me how it has helped them in their 

 work, and how it helped the whole neighborhood. I have 

 had letters from a few who have said that nothing in the 

 world, in connection with their school work, has so aided 

 them in keeping order in their schools and in keeping up an 

 interest; nothing has so helped them in their work. We 

 feel that we have started a good thing, and that the leaven 

 is working; and we hope that the work will be taken up 

 and carried on in the direction in which we have begun it, 

 and that good results will follow. I like to teach children 

 some of the elementary facts in horticulture in the most 

 simple things possible and see them try to carry them out. 

 You and I enjoy seeing a couple of little girls gather a few 

 flowers and put them together in a tasteful way and orna- 

 ment themselves with them. Did you ever think of that in 

 connection with the boys? Now our education is imperfect 

 until we consider that those things apply to the boys just as 

 much as to the girls. Take it in the house, it is just as im- 

 portant to have the boy's room fixed up as it is for the girl's. 

 Until we can take hold of this matter in earnest and distrib- 

 ute our attentions equally, we shall have boorish boys, and 

 we shall blame the boys for it, when we have helped to make 

 them so. Now I am just going over this ground from heads, 

 and I wish to tell you of something that I am doing. I am 

 teaching horticulture in my Sunday school class. They tell 

 me I am a crank on the subject, but I think the most beaut- 

 iful lessons in the Bible are those upon this subject. Take 

 the lesson of the lily and the lesson of the vine; how it 

 twines itself around the human heart. Why not make more 

 of these lessons? 



