Slimmer Meeting. 85 



the sparkling waters, the pure air and the soils of earth. The home for 

 singing birds and graceful squirrels, a shelter for the bounding deer, 

 a cool refreshing shade for man and beast, the protection and life of 

 weaker plants and the safeguard for the valleys below. Do not these 

 towering trees on the majestic mountains, with the clear blue sky above 

 suggesting the power, the goodness, the wisdom of Nature, form a more 

 pleasing and inspiring picture to hang on memory's wall than the 

 crumbling pyramids of lifeless stone, suggesting the tyranny and ignor- 

 ance of monarchs and the misery and death of subjects? There is nothing 

 that will eradicate these false ideas, dispel the lingering shades of a past 

 barbarity by the sunshine of a higher civilization, but a change in our 

 educational system, devoting more time to the planting and care of trees 

 and other plants, teaching the proper uses and appreciation of them 

 and of all nature — teach the mind to dwell upon life and happiness 

 rather than death and misery, to reverence the living mind more than the 

 dead body. 



It was learned years ago that it was a hopeless task to try to stamp 

 out the evils of intemperance by pleading with the drunkard; that the 

 temperance societies, pulpit and prayer meeting made, as a rule, only a 

 temporary impression, and that in the great army of drunkards the per- 

 manent reforms stood only as isolated cases. And as the drunkards died 

 off the ranks were filled by their descendants, polluting politics, wrecking 

 homes, filling poorhouses, jails and penitentiaries, insane and idiot asylums 

 and placing the burden of their support upon the better classes. Sense 

 and reason pointed to the school room as the point from which reforma- 

 tion should start; that the child, with its unformed habits and plastic 

 mind, might be so trained as to be prevented from cultivating the per- 

 nicious habit and taught to resist inherited tendencies. The W. C. T. U., 

 with its band of workers, did a noble work when, by their influence, 

 they caused physiology and hygiene, with special reference to the 

 evil effects of alcoholic stimulants, to be placed in our public school 

 curriculum. The highly colored lithograph, showing the diseased, 

 inflamed condition of the drunkard's stomach, filling the mind with 

 fear and disgust, is as familiar to the pupil of today as the lithograph 

 showing the circulation of the blood in the body. The evils of 

 intemperance are taught, the consequences shown, and good results 

 have followed. May the names of Francis Willard and her co-workers 

 go down in history as benefactors to humanity. But the only complete 

 and permanent remedy lies in the hands of the agriculturist and horti- 

 culturist. Science has proven that a perfectly nourished body never 

 craves but repels a stimulant, and that the unnatural craving for stimu- 



