THE ANNUAL MEETING. 153 



he may enter into communion with God's sweet gifts in plants and flowers. 

 Cooper's trapper could appreciate the solemn grandeur of the woods as fully as 

 Moore, or Shelley, or Emerson, but the trapper's love for the beautiful was be- 

 gotten by his constant association with the things that ho loved. And so it is 

 in life, with mayhaps an exception here and there, — association v/ith the beau- 

 tiful generates love for the beautiful in the soul and this love, once aroused, is 

 a glory to the inner life, even if the outward be full of trial and suffering. 



The Eoman adage "Poeta nascitur,*non fit," is true as regards the apprecia-- 

 tion of the deeper mysteries of nature and the heart, but the soul has never yet 

 come into the world which had no enjoyment in that which is beautiful. Even 

 the idiot will be attracted by a glittering bauble, and the untutored savage will 

 barter his comfort for gaudy beads. In the former nature is speaking through 

 the obscured faculties of the soul ; in the latter she is expressing the craving 

 of the ignorant mind for something it has not attained. We have all watched 

 the unfolding of the infant mind, and seen the human flower open, petal by 

 petal, before the glowing sunbeams of parental love. We may have wondered 

 how soon nature uttered her cry for the beautiful when the babe expressed it 

 iu infantile ecstacy over a picture or a flower, and the mother who will not strive 

 to gather round her child such things of beauty as her means will allow is 

 checking the God-given aspirations for nature and her gifts, which the loving 

 Father has im'planted in the human heart. But there is scarcely a mother who 

 will not do what she can to please her child in this, even if it be in very selfish- 

 ness, that the gratification of the baby's love of the beautiful may lessen her 

 own care. But as the child develops in body and as the childish mind expands 

 there are many mothers who give all their care to the former and heed but 

 little the nurture of the latter. Thank God, there are also many who, them- 

 selves delighting in the beautiful, surround their children with what will lead 

 them toward God in the works of His great hand-maid, Nature. It is not difficult 

 to distinguish between the child who has been trained to love the beautiful, and 

 the other whose childish cravings for the beautiful have been checked or 

 thwarted. Disguise it as we may, the surroundings of a child are not hard to 

 read in the child's proclivities, and, whether we acknowledge it or not, there is 

 a grace about the child in whom the love of the beautiful has been cultivated, 

 that gives him an advantage over the other in whom it has been thwarted. As 

 I heard it lately expressed with much aptness and force, '*' Weeds alone will 

 ^row in soil where no other seeds are planted." 



In this utilitarian age the realities of life crowd aesthetic tastes out of sight. 

 You seldom see a farmer give much attention to his flower garden. If you 

 find a bed of flowers in front of a farm-house, you may rest assured the hand 

 of woman has been there. In like manner, the merchant is so engrossed with 

 the cares which weigh upon him that, if his home be surrounded with the 

 treasures of beauty and color, in nine cases out of ten, it is due to feminine 

 taste, assisted by hired labor. If this be so around our homes, what need we 

 expect around our school-houses, so long as utilitarian man shuts out aesthetic 

 woman from a voice in what pertains to school affairs? Take a twenty mile 

 ride into the country in any direction, and every school-house that you pass 

 stands a monument of utilitarian niggardliness, and a protest against all that 

 nature holds as beautiful. At the best you will see a building with white, 

 glaring walls, set down in some unseemly corner, devoid of all that is at- 

 tractive, the grounds a wilderness of weeds, everything hard, angular, re- 

 pulsive, — and this is the sort of place where the boys and girls of America 

 -spend a fourth of their time. In some places that we wot of, the monotony of 



