nails cut mother's carpet, a bushel of Avheat once in three years, will keep him in slippers of 

 the easiest kind. Let the table which has always stood under the looking glass, against the 

 wall, be wheeled into the room, and plenty of useful (not ornamental) books and peri- 

 odicals be laid upon it. When evening comes, bring on the lights — and plenty of them — 

 for sons and daughters — all who can — will be most willing students. They will read, they 

 will learn, they will discuss the subjects o<" their studies with each other; and parents will 

 often be quite as much instructed as their children. The well conducted agricultural jour- 

 nals of our day throw a flood of light upon the science and practice of agriculture; while 

 such a work as Downing's Landscape Gardening, [or the Horticulturist,'] laid one year 

 upon that centre table, will show its effects to every passer-by, for with books and studies 

 like these, a purer taste is born, and grows most vigorously. 



Pass along that road after five years working of this system in the family, and what a 

 change! The thistles by the roadside enriched the manure heap for a year or two, and 

 then they died. The.se beautiful maples and those graceful elms, that beautify the grounds 

 around that renovated home, were grubbed from the wide hedge-rows of five years ago; 

 and so were those prolific rows of blackberries and raspberries, and bush cranberries that 

 show so richly in that neat garden, yielding abundance of small fruit in their season. 

 The unsightly out-houses are screened from observation by dense masses of foliage; and 

 the many climbing plants that now hang in graceful festoons from tree, and porch, and 

 column, once clambered along that same hedge row. From the meadow, from the wood, 

 and from the gurgling stream, many a native wild flower has been transplanted to a genial 

 soil, beneath the homestead's sheltering wing, and j'ields a daily offering to the household 

 gods, by the hands of those fair priestesses who have now become their ministers. By 

 the planting of a few trees, and shrubs, and flowers, and climbing plants, around that once 

 bare and uninviting house, it has become a tasteful residence, and its money value is more 

 than doubled. A cultivated taste displays itself in a thousand forms, and at every touch 

 of its hand gives beauty and value to property. A judicious taste, so far from plunging 

 its possessor into expense, makes money for him. The land on which that hedge row grew 

 five j^ears ago, for instance, has produced enough since to doubly pay the expense of grub- 

 bing it, and of transferring its fruit briers to the garden, where they have not only sup- 

 plied the family with berries in tlieir season, but have j'ielded many a surplus quart, to 

 purchase that long row of red and yellow Antwerps, and English gooseberries; to say 

 nothing of the scions bought with their monej', to/orm new heads for the trees in the old 

 orchard. 



These sons and daughters sigh no more for city life, but love with intense affection every 

 foot of ground they tread upon, every tree, and every vine, and every shrub their hands 

 have planted, or their taste has trained. But stronger still do their affections cling to that 

 family room, where their minds first began to be developed, and to that center-table around 

 which they still gather with the shades of evening, to drink in knowledge, and wisdom, 

 and understanding. 



The stout farmer, who once looked upon his acres onl}' as a laboratory for transmitting 

 labor into gold, now takes a widely different view of his possessions. His eyes are opened 

 to the biautifiil in nature, and he looks with reverence upon every giant remnant of the 

 forest, that by good luck escaped his murderous axe in former days. No leafy monarch is 

 now laid low without a stern necessity demands it; but many a vigorous tree is planted 

 in the hope that the children of his cliildren may gather beneath the spreading branches, 

 alk with pious gratitude of him who planted them. No longer feeling the need of 

 his phj^sical powers to the utmost, his eye takes the place of his hand, when the 



