THE HOME BEAUTIFUL 53 



intense kind, for my love of things horticultural has led me to observe 

 the overlapping and intermingling that things agricultural and horticul- 

 tural have. The relationship of the two is very close and the influence 

 of that with which you as members of this association have to do. to 

 my mind, has a vital and potent power in enabling the agriculturist to 

 become an individuality possessing the ability to rightly understand his 

 relations with the gr«at natural kingdom as well as those of social life 

 and its responsibilities. Hence with your permission I shall discuss, 

 "The Home Beautiful and Its Relation to Character Building." 



You may ask the question, "Why do you as a farmer consider that 

 a relationship exists between what is so apparently material and that 

 which we call in the abstract 'character'?" The latter, I take it to be, 

 is merely the accretion of certain acts, which, becoming more and more 

 of a uniform quality, are established, and we call it "charcater." There- 

 fore anything that has a power to produce thoughts, acts or ideals which 

 are of a high order, we must of necessity say is of vital importamce 

 to us, not merely as individuals, but as communities and states. 



:My observation has been — and this extends over a period since my 

 boyhood days — that with which we are immediately surrounded exercises 

 a most potent influence over us. It may be that we are involuntarily 

 affected, and I think it is often true that imperceptibly that with which, 

 we are in close personal contact leaves an indelible impression upon our 

 personal characters. We take on the coloring of those things that we 

 see and hear. The food that our senses feed upon as a rule leaves its 

 individual characteristic upon our personal life. Therefore I am led to 

 say. How important it is that the environment of our senses should be 

 of a kind to provide the necessary sustenance, not merely to keep alive, 

 but to develop those qualities of life which have in mind the loftiest 

 ideals! 



That the plant, the flower, the tree lover have been of inestimable 

 value to the human race to me is a certainty. So today I bring you a 

 word of good cheer from the agricultural world and say to you from my 

 very heart, how mu'ch your work is valued and appreciated and that the 

 missionary of 'beauty and esthetic taste occupies a position that is unique 

 in the land. To be the producer, the lover, the distributor of things at- 

 tractive that enable us to make home beautiful, is to be the furnisher of 

 that which exerts over personal character an influence for exalted things. 



The particular phase of the subject I have chosen upon which to say 

 a few words relates more especially to the country home. In our own 

 particular state we might appropriately call it the home of the multi- 

 tude, for, as we all know, country homes in this state are the most numer- 

 ous. For many years the trend of the life and thought, especially in our 

 own land, has been toward the great centers of population. All roads, 

 whether material or sentimental, seem to lead there. A kind of Roman 

 centralization of materiality and sentimentality, and what culture and 

 lofty idealism existed in the country, was caught up in this whirlwind and 



