142 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



The cemetery should receive earnest attention. Instead of being a tangled 

 mass of briers, and weeds, and grass, and all unsightliness, that makes one 

 fairly shudder to think of, it should be so beautiful and embellished that it 

 shall be a source of pure and quiet pleasure to all who visit it, and that it may 

 be worthy of its sacred title, " God's Acre." 



The educational bearings of this subject, if less obvious, are not less im- 

 portant. The external improvements prompted by these associations have in 

 many cases developed a local pride and public spirit which have displaced 

 many a weather-w'orn and comfortless school-house. Public interest once 

 enlisted in the adornment of streets, parks, cemeteries, and kindred plans, is 

 sure to embrace the school-house. The people are learning that village im- 

 provement promotes the growtli and prosperity of a town by inviting wealthy 

 and desirable residents from abroad, just as neglected streets, school-houses, 

 and other signs of an illiberal policy invest a town with an air of discourage- 

 ment and decay. The influence of such an association in cultivating the taste, 

 fostering the study of nature, developing in youth a love of flowers, vines, 

 shrubbery, and trees, all the stronger because they have planted and cultivated 

 them, thus fostering domestic attachments, and checking the excessive passion 

 for city life, suggest some of the ways in which it supplements the work of the 

 school. The interest should center in the homes and home life. "The hope 

 •of America is the homes of America." There remain still too many homes 

 and grounds desolate, neglected, and repulsive, where taste, and trees, shrub- 

 bery, hedges, or creeping vines, with a bit of lawn, would make "the wilderness 

 blossom as the rose." Unquestionably, neglect and slatternliness in and 

 around the house repel from their rural homes many youth who might other- 

 wise be bound in the strongest ties to the fireside. 



Modern civilization relates specially to the homes and social life of the 

 people ; to their health, comfort and thrift — their intellectual and moral 

 advancement. It is a good omen that public interest in the embellishments of 

 rural homes and villages is widely extending, and that the varied charms of the 

 country with its superior advantages for the physical and moral training of 

 children are attracting many thoughtful men to the simpler enjoyments and 

 employments of rural life. Every influence should therefore be combined to 

 foster home attachments, for there is protection as well as education in the 

 fervent love of home with its sacred associations. Patriotism itself hinges in 

 the domestic sentiments. Whatever adorns one's home and ennobles his domes- 

 tic life, strengthens his love of country and nurtures all the better elements of 

 his nature. 



These are a few of the -ways in which a society of this kind can be useful. It 

 may be said that the village or town authorities control some of these things, but 

 they are the servants of the people, and go only so far as the people say. What 

 •we want is such a rousing of public sentiment that these improvements shall be 

 demanded, and such an awakening of interest and enthusiasm that everybody 

 shall be stimulated to individual effort. If we of South Haven can make such an 

 organized as well as individual effort, then shall our village put on a beauty of 

 "which we never dreamed. People of taste and culture and refinement shall 

 come to us, and shall abide with us; our own attacliment for the place shall 

 grow stronger and stronger ; value of property will increase ; business will grow, 

 and in every way tlie prosperity of the place will be advanced. 



May not our State horticultural society very properly add to its valuable 

 labors by aiding in the formation and promoting the welfare of such organiza- 

 tion? It may not seem so vitally important as some other things, and yet I 



