334 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



thing tliat cannot be kept anywhere else. Let this practice of 

 improving: our homesteads become general, and a new source of 

 beauty will be created of incalculable value. Tree associations 

 in some villages have done much to promote this end, and in 

 some instances the private speculator has had the wisdom to 

 perceive that a graceful elm, or a beautiful maple, would give 

 increased value to liis lots. Thanks be to avarice for accom- 

 plishing what good taste has neglected ! 



Our community could be much improved and made more at- 

 tractive by greater attention to the improvement of the grounds 

 about our dwellings. Li many cases there is utter neglect ; and 

 it would seem that the cultivation of a fruit tree, or a flower, in 

 the neighborhood of such«a house, is regarded as an encroach- 

 ment upon the rights of tlie brier and thistle, and as such must 

 be most studiously avoided. Let the brier and thistle have 

 their rights ; but it is a mistaken kindness to allow them to mo- 

 nopolize the whole of a door-yard. If instead of this slovenly 

 appearance, which offends the eye and makes home repulsive, a 

 little attention was given to make the homestead neat, the 

 grounds tasteful to the sense and agreeable to the eye, who 

 does not perceive that it would tend to create a new attachment 

 for home? 



Want of time is no excuse for this neglect, and though often 

 urged, has no foundation in fact. Every person who is able to 

 own land can improve it. It costs nothing. It is but the 

 amusement of the leisure hour. It is an amusement in which 

 the wifeand daughters can participate. In a pecuniary point 

 of view it would be difficult to say in what way the value of 

 the homestead could be so much increased. The bare walls 

 may be covered with the grape vine, and the old building with 

 our native woodbine, with which the forests are filled. Want 

 of time or means to do these things is but the miserable apology 

 for the want of good taste and reasonable good sense. It is 

 evidence not only that the occupant is dead to the sense of 

 beauty, but that he cannot appreciate that which helps make 

 the humblest home a paradise. 



Such improvements have a value beyond that of the gratifi- 

 cation of the taste. Their value is real and substantial. They 

 afford that which money cannot buy. The children grow up 

 with attachments to the cottage and lands thus improved. The 



