No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 165 



unsightly valley or hill will ''bloom and blossom as the rose." We 

 jshould do this, not for ourselves alone, not for the pleasure it will 

 atford the visitor or the traveler, but for our children, who, perhaps 

 when widely separated, and we are sleeping beneath the grasses, 

 will think of the old home place, although it may have been humble, 

 as the prettiest spot they ever saw. 



We naturally think, that of all places, the country should be the 

 healthiest. But statistics prove, that in many sections the mortality 

 is greater and cases of fever and other contagious diseases more num- 

 erous by far, according to the population, than in adjacent towns and 

 cities. Why is it? I was early taught that all such afflictions were 

 dispensations of Providence; but since I am older, I have come to be- 

 lieve that they are largely the result of the violation or neglect 

 upon our part of some law of health, some unsanitary condition of 

 the premises about our homes, or of the water which we drink. 



Not long since I attended a public sale in one of the nicest sections 

 in Pennsylvania. While waiting for the sale to begin, I went into 

 the house where the wife of the owner of the property told me of 

 the dreadful time they had had from early spring and all through 

 the summer with typhoid malaria, the entire family of seven, with 

 but one exception, having been very ill. I inquired if she knew of any 

 cause for the disease. She replied not; that the doctors had ex- 

 amined the cellar and the drinking water, but found nothing that 

 might cause the disease. Before leaving, I looked around the prem- 

 ises, as I had been so favorably impressed with the place. It was 

 a low, but gently rolling farm, sloping down to a stream. The house 

 stood on an elevation, and the cellar may have been all right. The 

 well was within six feet of the kitchen door and the waste water 

 from the pump run down an open ditch for perhaps 20 or 25 feet. At 

 this point stood the family vault. There was no vault to speak of, 

 only a continuation of the open ditch run down across the lot, ending 

 ill a low, flat field. The waste water from the pump was evidently 

 supposed to carry off the contents of the closet, but it could not, 

 there was not fall enough to have flushed it out with a force pump 

 and hose, and in the warm days of spring, when the ground is satu- 

 rated with water, just imagine what typhoid malaria and other 

 death-dealing germs must have been propagated in such a spot. 



Nothing is more productive of disease than flat, filthy, undrained 

 land, and stagnant water should not be permitted near the farm 

 home, nor on the farm if it can be avoided. 



And, while I am on this topic, I want to say that the ordinary out- 

 door closet in the country demands especial care,, if we would avoid 

 sickness in the home. Every dweller in the country should make it 

 a matter of habit, to do everything possible, to keep the air, earth 

 and water about their homes pure; absolutely pure. The cause of 



