176 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



and happy in it. A small sum of money having been given 

 them to use for their pleasure, they unanimously agreed to 

 devote it to a green-house, in which they could more perfectly 

 raise the flowers which they love so much. Now they have 

 their little winter garden, always fragrant with beauty, giving 

 them refreshment after toil, and cheer and comfort in every 

 hour of sadness. 



It has always seemed to me that flowers were the most per- 

 fect expression of the Divine Love. They are useful, it is true, 

 but the practical does not obtrude itself ; they seem to bloom for 

 the sake of expressing the love and joy that call them into 

 being. There is no joy so sacred, no sorrow so profound and 

 sensitive, no human love so tender and so true, that it may not 

 find expression in these beautiful symbols. They do not in- 

 trude ; they are never out of place. The peasant may bring the 

 spring daisy to a queen, and feel that it is a fit offering; the lover 

 brings a rose to his chosen maiden and needs no other word6 ; 

 we place the lily on the altar and it requires no consecrating 

 touch. I have seen poor little children pick up the withered 

 bouquets which had been thrown out on the ash barrels of 

 wealthy houses, and have felt how universal is this love of the 

 beautiful, and what a good work he is doing who helps to put 

 flowers within the reach of all. 



So, too, our poet philosopher has well said, " If a man should 

 send to me to come a hundred miles to visit him, and should 

 set before me a basket of fine summer fruit, I should think 

 there was some proportion between the labor and the reward.'* 



Other considerations might be named, incidentally showing 

 the advantages of out-door life and occupation for women. It 

 certainly would tend towards a reform in dress. Imagine a 

 fashionably dressed woman, with trailing skirt, flounces and 

 bows, with streaming ribbons, and dangling laces, engaged in 

 pruning her bushes and rearing her vines ; the feathers of her 

 hat catching among the branches, the trains of her skirts knock- 

 ing down flower-pots in her green-house ; her garments bearing 

 witness of nature's great provision for carrying seeds to a dis- 

 tance. 



Does it not show that devotion to a useful and simple work 

 will inevitably tend to produce a simple and convenient style of 

 dress ? Whether it should be the short petticoat and broad hat 



