The Beautiful axd True in American Homes. 117 



themselves, the plants come up much earlier in the season and 

 are usually more hardy and vigorous, and will bloom much 

 earlier, and usually more freely, 



Mrs. Prof. Sawyer read a paper written by Mrs. E. Y. Richmond, 

 of Appleton, on 



THE BEAUTIFUL AND TRUE IN AMERICAN HOMES. 



" God might have made the earth bring forth 

 Enough for great and small, 

 The oak tree, and the cedar tree, 

 And not a llower at all." 



But instead He has painted the very weeds at our feet so 

 gorgeously that " even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed 

 like one of these." Are we, then, wiser than our Creator? Have 

 we the right to dash out the glowing and the beautiful from our 

 lives? 



" To stint our souls, and warp our inner being to gather tinsels 

 for our coffin-lid." To lay out our inheritances and plant our 

 hearthstones, with all the Religion of the Beautiful left out. 



Is there not in this leaning to the too stern and practical side 

 of life a vague clue to the unsatisfied restlessness of our Amer- 

 ican youth ? The home of the father becomes too straight for 

 the sons; nothing but a ranch on the Colorado, a vineyard on the 

 Pacific, or a mine beneath the Sierra Nevadas, will bound their 

 aspiration. Thus it too often happens that at the old gloomy fire- 

 sides, sit solitary and alone, the aged father and mother, whose 

 uneasy brood of fledglings have flown to all points of the compass 

 in search of a freer latitude and a more exhilarating atmosphere, 

 leaving forever the uncompromising surroundings of their child- 

 hood's home, perhaps never to re-enter it more, unless sumnioned 

 by sudden telegram. 



How can we expect that a few toil burdened acres, as blank 

 and birren of beauty as the steppes of Siberia, will long confine 

 the young eagles we would fetter to their roost, beneath the 

 household rafters? Our only hold upon them is to frame for 

 them, on memory's walls, such a glowing picture that neither 



