680 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



The extent of a lawn should be limited to your ability and interest to 

 take care of it. Do not overreach yourself with a large, ill kept garden, 

 when a smaller one might have been kept in better shape. You will have 

 a thousand things to contend with. Rabbits, mice, sunscald, blight, borers 

 and caterpillars; things seen and things unseen, will drive you out of 

 the business in short order if you are a half-hearted horticulturist with a 

 big lot of trees on your hands. The spring following the hard winter of 

 '90 and '91, I hauled out two big wagon loads of dead trees of every de- 

 scription. It was the saddest cremation I ever attended, to see the pets 

 of my lawn, objects of many years' care, go up in smoke and ashes. But 

 the final triumphs and success in this as in all undertakings will enable 

 us to forget its attending failures and disappointments, and today I realize 

 the fulfillment of my boyhood dreams of being the proud possesser of 

 every tree and shrub adapted to this climate. 



AVHAT FARMERS SHOULD READ. 



Mrs. John Carson, before the Winnebago County Farmers' Institute. 

 Not the least among the privileges and delight of a farmer's life t- 

 the leisure for reading. The opportunity of holding fellowship with noted 

 men and women through books and papers. Our city and town friend^ 

 may well envy us this boon of leisure to one's self and family for reading. 

 After the evening work is finished and all gather around the lamp in win- 

 ter, on or the porch or in a hammock in summer the interruption is the 

 exception, not the rule as in town or business life. One can actually lose 

 himself in the perusal of some good book, can travel all over the worla 

 by means of descriptive essays; and make friends of the greatest men 

 and women in the world through a sympathetic following of their thoughts. 

 Man instinctively grows to be like those with whom he constantly asso- 

 ciates. In the line of books, and reading matter, there is no reason why 

 farmers and farmers' wives should not choose the very best there is in the 

 world — consequently they may have for associates the best people in the 

 world, and grow to be themselves like those, and with whom they are 

 constantly thinking. 



One is never alone, with a good book at hand and there can be no 

 thought of loneliness in connection with farms on the mail routes, where 

 fresh reading matter is at hand each day. A public library is a blessing 

 to any community, and even if it be ten miles away, a book can be kept 

 two weeks; and all go to town on business oftener than that. 



Those receiving the mail, early in the day, on the mail routes, have 

 the advantage in this way — they can all look over the daily papers at noon 

 time, or in the intervals of leisure, and still have the evening left for the 

 periodical, while if the mail is not brought in until night, it is a tempta- 

 tion to some to spend the entire evening, with the papers. There is a great 

 deal in our daily pap'ers, not worth reading, much less studying. One 



