54 MISSOURI STATE HOETICULTRAL SOCIETY. 



THE ADORNMENT OF HOME. 



BY MRS. NELLIE M'VEY, OF SEDALIA. 



In Holy Writ we are enjoined to " build bouses and dwell in tliem ; 

 plant gardens and eat tlie fruits thereof," and few injunctions meet 

 with more hearty approval or bring richer rewards for their obedience. 

 It is gratifying to know that the houses need not of necessity be either 

 costly or elegant, all may build according to their means. Often the 

 merest hut is more surely a home than is the grandest triumph of 

 architecturel skill. The home is the cradle of the nation. From no 

 other source springs such lasting influences for good or evil. We al- 

 ways remember home, and the lessons learned there. On life's battle 

 field, amid the smoke and din of warfare, these lessons may become 

 dimmed, yet down in our hearts they live as nothing else will live, and 

 a familiar flower, a floating breath of fragrance, the melody of some old 

 song, will often sweep away the cobwebs and corrosion, and the dear 

 old home beams out of the past so vividly, and strong men are not 

 ashamed of the tears such memory bells bring to their eyes. 



How important, then, that we have good homes from which to 

 send forth the coming men and women, and no home is worthy of the 

 name that is not, in its best sense, beautiful — in simplicity, tasts and 

 refining influences. Where can you find homes more truly beautiful 

 than those of the farmer? 



The city home, with its elegant carvings and massive stone walls, 

 may excite admiration — envy, if you please — ^in the hearts of those who 

 only see the glitter beyond the shimmer of costly laces, but the beauti- 

 ful rooms fronting upon the street, with their fillings of lovely things 

 which only money can buy or leisure create, are not the " homes " of 

 the city people; these lovely places are the "parlors" — the show 

 places of the establishments, and people do not live in their parlors. 

 Back of all this, often in dark and dingy rooms, poorly furnished and 

 full of bad emells, and opening into or overlooking nasty alley-ways, 

 live the ones so blindly envied, while they — the denizens of dust and 

 dampness ; do you ever think how they long for an hour among the 

 cool grasses, a breath of the sweet country air, or the meanest clump 

 of meadow violets and nodding golden lillies. 



