No. 7.. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 715 



rect lier assistants.' lu Iier own way, slie is a creature of might 

 but her strength is in her graces; her weapon is love, and her power 

 is resistless when these are combined with modest merit and dic- 

 tated by conscious duty. Her work and iofluence are a blessing any- 

 where but especially is this true when said of her in connection with 

 the home-life; herein lies the great responsibility of woman in whose 

 gentle hands tests the work of making her realm an abode of peace, 

 rest and happiness. Ruskin says: "Man is the sun of the world more 

 than the real sun;" then woman must be the sun in her home; if she 

 shine not, there is no light in that domestic system. Be happy your- 

 self and you will make your home happy for home influences per- 

 petuate themselves. To embellish that home, to make happy the 

 lives of her husband and the dear ones committed to her trust is 

 the honored task which is the wife's province to perform. 



The true estimate of woman's office in the home is not fiilly made 

 by a large number who undertake its responsibilities. To enter 

 thoughtlessl}' upon the duties and obligations of a home is but to re- 

 sult in an awakening, later on that woman's work is not child's play, 

 nor life an empty dream. Our earliest and best recollections are as- 

 sociated with the home. There the first lessons of infancy are 

 learned. The mother's heart is really the child's first school-room; 

 and the first book that children read is their parents example — their 

 daily deportment, therefore parents should be what they wish their 

 children to be. To the mother belongs the privilege of planting 

 in the hearts of her children those seeds of love which nurtured and 

 fostered will bear the fruit of earnest and useful lives. It is she who 

 must fit them to meet the duties and emergencies of life, and in this 

 work of training she keeps her heart fresh and young and thereby 

 insures the growth of those powers with which nature has endowed 

 her. 



Now the impression is pretty general that wherever we find an 

 inhabited dwelling there is a home in every respect and it certainly 

 should be such, but unfortunately there are many households in which 

 housekeeping aod homekeepiug are not synonymous terms. The 

 house may be so consciously kept that none find a home-likeness 

 within its walls. True, order and cleanliness, to a certain extent, 

 are necessary to the comfort of its occupants, and comfort should 

 be one of the leading characteristics of every home be it great or 

 small. And right here I might say that to keep a house sweet, clean, 

 fresh and always in the order that will ensure comfort to its occu- 

 pants is no easy task, but we should make our housew'ork become a 

 means toward a desirable end rather than an end of itself. The 

 true home-maker looks to the peace of her household, and seeks to 

 know and meet the higher needs of mind and soul as well as those of 

 body, fully realizing that comfort and happiness are not to be de- 

 rived simply from the serving of perfect dinners, which never vary 

 in their completeness from one day to another. We protest, then, 

 against becoming absorbed in the necessarj^ rounds of labor to the ex- 

 tent of precluding higher work, for the round of home-duties is nar- 

 row and has a tendency to narrow us if we enter no protest. 



Life is short. To get the best there is out of life as it may be in- 

 dividually appointed should be the study of all. Home then must be 

 that place of which it can be said in after years: ''To me it was 

 the most pleasant place on earth." This being true is does not follow 



