116 MISSOURI STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Salem's liaughty fane reared high to heaven its thousand golden 

 domes, the wandering Arab's tent flaps in the desert blast ; where the 

 hanging gardens of Babylon perfumed the air, the owlets hoot and 

 vampires hover; and on the banks of the Kile, where the dark Egyp- 

 tian queen held high carnival — where her gardens extended over the 

 face of the waters — they are not, and the story is told. 



But here, in our own land and country, there is none to molest or 

 make us afraid. We are emphatically a nation of homes. From our 

 altars arise the sweetest of incense; we eat from our vine and fig tree, 

 and worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience — 

 the old Hebrew's dream of heaven. From the cottage on our praries 

 to the palatial residences in our cities, comes the proud feeling of pos- 

 session by the right of ownership — a protection in and of itself to the 

 nation, for seldom do we see or hear of the owner of a home crrying 

 the red flag of confusion. Last summer, as I tarried for a while in a 

 northern city, we accidentally heard a band of workmen clamoring 

 among themselves for a strike. One, and only one, pleaded wife and 

 children and home. "Boys, don't! I can't go with you; I won't go 

 with you." They drifted from us in their slow work, the one still plead- 

 ing for wife, children and home. Again I repeat, no call for the red 

 flag here in this favored land. Uncle Sam is yet able to give us all a 

 farm. Our acres are broad and productive, and here are homes for 

 the millions. Not for the absentee, who holds by proxy; not for the 

 foreigner, who accumulate our lands and send their minions here to do 

 their bidding — to the attention of our legislators, in halls assembled, is 

 now being called — but for the citizen, the law-abiding citizen, of these 

 United States, where they can have planting and gathering, sowing 

 and reaping, knowing that seed time and harvest shall never end. Es- 

 tablishing homes which will descend from sire to son, gathering as they 

 go beauty, strength and power. And of woman in these homes, the 

 half has not been told. AVith an eye for the beautifal, with a love for 

 the pure and, with a pride for a husband's success and children's ad- 

 vancement; with a keen quick, discernment of what is for the best 

 (with just one-half of a chance), home is made almost a paradise. I 

 know, too often, she is the Hebrew of which a song is required, and of 

 her bricks without straw, and that she has to battle valiantly against 

 combined evils; but there is many a joy in the path of life, if we only 

 stop to take it. In no place in this great work does she hp.ve so much 

 freedom, and strength and power awarded her as in the homes of our 

 states. Our husbands, and sons and neighbors are so gallant, so brave 

 and loyal that they outvie the nations of the world in chivalry to woman, 



