STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 55 



of Mrs. Quint's petunia. She could not well refuse them, and Edith 

 had such a "knack" of getting them to root and thriftily growing in 

 her pretty papered and netted cans and disabled crockery*, almost 

 before she knew it, Mrs. Quint had her window ledge full of plants, 

 and was just as eager and ambitious as any of her neighbors to have 

 the best variety of house plants in the community. 



Some one has said that when a woman takes a new tack, she never 

 goes it by halves, and Edith's mother w^as no exception. She sub- 

 scribed for a leading floral magazine that she might wage war against 

 red spiders and rose bugs, plant lice and scales, understandingly 

 and with sure destruction. Indeed, she became such an authority 

 on the subject of insect extermination, and in the ready recognition 

 and correct naming of rare plants, by the help of her well studied 

 journal, she became a subscriber to other standard floral and agri- 

 cultural periodicals, that she might keep full}' posted and her repu- 

 tation might not suffer from any mistakes. 



Edith and her brothers also read this new literature that had come 

 into their home, and enjoyed it. Wide-awake growing boys will read 

 something, and if interesting, pure matter is not furnished them they 

 are apt to turn to tiiat which is entertaining and unclean, thus ^itain- 

 ing their minds and hearts. The Quint bo3's were just at that age 

 when yellow-covered, "blood and thunder" literatuie cieeps in. but 

 their mother's beautiful floral magazines and fresh, breezy journals, 

 comintr into their home every week or month, headed it off and filled 

 their minds with a real love and zeal for better things. The clean, 

 bright pages illustrated the making of rustic shelves and seats, 

 hanging baskets and other ingenious designs. The boys read, 

 thought, planned, wdiittled, sawed and hammered, and pretty brack- 

 ets, rustic trellises and swinging plant rests, "just like those in moth- 

 er's book," grew under their busy hands, all helping in the good work 

 of making home beautiful and the children happy and contented in it. 



One article on "Window Shelves" sent them clattering round in 

 the garret, till they had unearthed from a pile of rubbish tw^o old 

 bedstead head boards of bird's-eye maple, riciily stained with age and 

 past all warping with their seventy years of seasoning under that 

 same house roof. The boards were cut down to the right length and 

 width, and mounted on stout, iron brackets before upper lights of a 

 south window. When Edith's thrifty seedlings and clambering vines 

 had been placed on them, filling the window from sill to top with 

 beauty, and the neighbors came in to admire and approve with hearty 



