Animal Meeting at St. Joseph. 183 



OENAMENTALS FOR PLANTING. 



BY CHAKLES W. MURTFELDT, OF KIEKSVILLE, MO, 



"Make the home beautiful, bring to it flowers ; 



Plant them around you to bud and to bloom ; 



Let them give light to your loneliest hours — 



Let them bring light to enliven your gloom ; 



If you can do so, O, make it an Eden, 



Of beauty and gladness almost divine ; 



' Twill teach you to long for that home you are needing 



The earth robed in beauty beyond this dark clime." 



The love of the beautiful has been implanted by a beneficent 

 Creator, in every human breast. It finds expression in the admir- 

 ation of all that is lovely and charming in natui-e and art, and it 

 prompts men, and especially ladies, to the adorning of their per- 

 sons and their natural surroundings. The aboriginal of America 

 and the savage of Africa, form no exception to the general rule ; 

 but the higher the civilization, the more refined and cultivated the 

 taste, the greater is the longing, not only to adorn the person and 

 surroundings, but to gratify the desire of beholding all that is 

 grand, beautiful, picturesque and delightful in nature and art. 

 The wisest and best of men have written about the love of the 

 beautiful ; poets have immortalized its praises in verse ; the 

 lecture platform has depicted it in encomiums and language both 

 chaste and eloquent, to enraptured multitudes ! 



The love of the beautiful has caused men to travel thousands 

 of miles, to endure privation, fatigue and hardship, yea, even to 

 risk health and life itself, that their longings to gaze from some 

 lofty mountain peak, if but for an hour or two, upon the exquisite 

 beauty of a panorama spread out at their feet, upon a real picture 

 painted in indescribable colors by God Himself, may be gratified. 



Thousands upon thousands have braved the storms and dis- 

 comforts of the broad Atlantic ; the trials and terrors of aEuroj)ean 

 feather-bed, and the mysteries of the French kitchen, in order to 

 behold the never-to-be-forgotten colors of the waters of the Rhine, 

 its terraced and vineclad hills, the magnificent ruins of ancient 

 feudal castles, and the modern, surpassing and impregnable 

 fortress of Ehrenbreitenstein. Thev will climb the dangerful 

 heights of Mont Blanc or of the Matterhornto revel in the grandeur 

 of a sun-rise among the glaciers of the Alps. 



