320 Stale JlorticvUnra} Society. 



sink her more tender and gentle feminine qualities and standing up 

 shoulder to shoulder with men, fight for and win place in business, 

 public position and politics. For a brief time it looked as though the 

 true home life was to be overthrown, and that boarding houses, with 

 men cooks, together Avith men milliners, dressmakers and nurses, 

 would supply the semblance of home to the nation's future great men 

 and women. But when we got time to think farther, we began to 

 know that great and good a thing as it was to help make laws for 

 the good of men, it was a much better and greater thing to rear the 

 boys and girls to honest, wholesome maturity, with broad sympathies 

 and generous hearts, and with a purity of life gained through knowl- 

 edge of nature's laws and not through ignorance. But woman never 

 could go back to the home under the old conditions. She must bring 

 the home up to meet her higher ideal and the changed condition of 

 things. Never again will she fear to express an opinion, or to eat 

 pork and beans in public, if she so desires, while weakness of mind 

 or body will be carefully kept in the background, as they are the 

 witnesses of our ignorance of nature's laws. 



What has all this to do with horticulture, you ask. Very much, 

 for this is one of the few avocations which fully and beautifully com- 

 bine with home life and training; for never again will women of 

 ability sit down and cry over the inability of the. head of the house to 

 buy her a new spring bonnet. She is a broader, wiser, more inde- 

 pendent woman, and she will use her abilities best in helping those 

 she loves, and incidentally, by example, by precept and by the quali- 

 ties of character instilled into the minds of her children, help the 

 whole world. 



What ofifers greater opportunities for such a life work than horti- 

 culture? A home among plants, vines and trees, with lovely blos- 

 soms and satisfying fruits, appeals to all that is artistic in a woman's 

 life, while the practical features are visible every day in the year. 

 The home mother can "look well to the ways of her household" and 

 with the company and assistance of her little ones plant and grow and 

 gather in the luscious fruits. If she but grow and train the grape- 

 vine on the back porch or arbor, she may teach by practical lessons 

 the very foundation of horticultural education. She need not stop 

 in the dooryard, but reaching out from her home she may plant great 

 orchards and grow them to maturity or she may take advantage of 

 the work of others in this line and push her horticultural products 

 into all the markets of the civilized world. With the aid of the type- 

 writer and telegraph, her business influence may circle the earth 



