TWENTY FIFTH ANNUAL MEETING. 221 



ciples. No more does the want of a universal conception of beauty prove 

 that there is no such thing as absolute beauty, nor advantage in studying 

 its principles. 



But how shall we educate our children in these lines? It is a fact 

 that the human heart is naturally so selfish and vain that it is always the 

 tendency of the leaders in any branch of human knowledge to so formu- 

 late the statements of it as to magnify the importance of their own 

 specific knowledge on that subject. Thus, the doctrines and dogmas of 

 the church all tend to magnify the importance of the clergy; our laws are 

 so shaped as to give increased importance to the lawyer; and when artists 

 try to educate people in knowledge of beauty, the tendency is to direct 

 attention to the art rather than to the beauty of which the art is an 

 expression. Ruskin tells us that all beauty has its origin in some thought: 

 of the Creator expressed in. natural forms. Certainly every form and 

 shade of beauty finds an expression in the plants which one may grow- 

 even in the temperate climate; and as a horticulturist I naturally tend 

 to magnify the value of the garden as a school of beauty. 



But a child's moral character is developed far more by the daily influ- 

 ence of those about him than from a study of the doctrines of the church. 

 A man's habits of lawlessness or law-abiding are more the outcome of 

 his daily experience than of his knowledge of the statutes, and I am not 

 sure that a large garden is the best place to develop a boy's love of the 

 beautiful, especially if he is asked to do most of the disagreeable work 

 of caring for it. 



Did you ever think how everything that is really worth anything in 

 this world is free to everybody, is the free gift of the Creator, thus show- 

 ing the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God? How much is 

 honor worth as compared with love? Can you buy love? . Is it not just as 

 possible to the beggar as to the king? How much is wealth worth, com- 

 pared with health; and can anybody own, accumulate, any more health 

 than he can use? Can the health of the world be "cornered"? George 

 Vanderbilt may own a Carolina landscape to the horizon, but can he get 

 any more of its beauty than the poorest man that looks at it? My neigh- 

 bor may, at the cost of hundreds of dollars, establish a beautiful garden; 

 but after he has enjoyed is beauty to the utmost, there is just as much 

 for me. Love, health, beauty, are the gifts of God to his children, and 

 he gives them so lavishly that every one can have all he can enjoy, and 

 no one, be he ever so strong, ever so shrewd, can take a single iota more 

 than he can enjoy. 



What I plead for, then, is that we strive to develop the capacity for 

 seeing and enjoying beauty, with which every child is born ; that we give 

 the baby the bright ribbon; that we let it pick the flower, and, as it grows 

 up, we talk to it of the beauty he will find everywhere. Our boy comes 

 to us with a beautiful snow crystal upon his sleeve, and we ignore it, 

 and gruffly tell him he had better sweep off the path. Charmed with the 

 beauty of the spring, he asks to go Maying. No, he must stay and dig 

 the dandelions from the lawn. 



Are God's works so inferior to those of man? Is all floral beauty cen- 

 tered in our cultivated flowers — the tulip, the rose, the canna? Is there 

 none in the plants of the field and wood — the trillium, the sweet briar, 

 the cardinal flower? Are we to look for beauty only where man has 

 spent his labor, and so laid claim to special rights, and ignore it in the 



