state; pomologicai, socie:ty. 167 



buildings. Then we want to plant about the borders, about 

 the house itself, the shrubbery and the flowers which shall make 

 of it an attractive picture. Now the landscape painter when he 

 starts to put a picture upon canvas meets with fewer limitations 

 than we meet with in working that picture in living plants. If 

 he thinks his picture will be more beautiful putting a mountain 

 or water scene in the distance, he can put it in. In the first 

 place he selects the point of view. We must accept it and look 

 at his picture from one point of view. Then he can improve it 

 in those ways. He makes a picture which remains always the 

 same. We must make a picture which changes from day to day, 

 season to season, year to year. It calls then for the highest 

 artistic ability to make that picture as it should be. The essen- 

 tials are first, the law, and then the grouping of shrubbery, 

 flowers and trees about the borders of that lawn and about the 

 home. And we want to remember to preserve all the most 

 attractive views from that home; to sit by the windows which 

 you use most and see what are the attractive scenes, and take 

 care that there are openings in those groups which enable you 

 to look at the view in the distance — it may be a bit of water; 

 it may be only a church spire ; it may be only a set of farm 

 buildings; but if you frame that object with plantings, so that 

 you look through and see that, it becomes at that moment attrac- 

 tive. There may be objects which are unattractive likewise, 

 and we want to shut those out. Now we can put about the 

 homeliest farm buildings a very little planting which shall par- 

 tially screen those from view and transform an unattractive 

 scene into one which becomes attractive. A little thought, a 

 little study can make of any home a delightful place and a pic- 

 ture. And then we want to do all that we can do to make the 

 home within as bright and happy as it may be. Let us realize 

 that the children within that home are of more importance than 

 the dollars which we are seeking to bring to it. It is of far 

 more importance that we help those children to the noblest 

 impulse of life, that we help them to make the home a home 

 which they will always think of with pleasure and be glad to 

 return to even if they leave it for some other calling, realizing 

 that boys and girls are worth more than dollars and land. Now 

 we do not need to go into the distance to find the opportunities. 



