THE GENERAL CARE 



well-regulated home. If you can keep your 

 plants healthy, it stands to reason that the rest 

 of the family ought to be so, since what suits 

 the vegetable part of it is about right, in most 

 respects, for the human part. 



Most plants will be satisfied with a tempera- 

 ture of seventy degrees F., by day, and sixty 

 by night. A few prefer seventy-five by day, 

 and sixty-five at night. We may consider 

 seventy on the cool side, so habituated have we 

 become to a higher temperature, but if we set 

 out with the determination of accustoming 

 ourselves to it, we will soon discover that it 

 affords greater comfort than the higher one, 

 and that the feeling of lassitude and general 

 enervation which we have complained of here- 

 tofore, has been dissipated by the change. 

 I am not making this statement as a round- 

 about way of saying that we should accommo- 

 date ourselves wholly to conditions that will 

 please our plants, and decry personal prefer- 

 ences and comfort for their sakes. I make it 

 because it goes to show that so much more sen- 

 sible are their demands than ours that if we 

 succeed in making them comfortable we are 

 benefited as much as they are. There is a 

 poetical justice in this which is quite inde- 



106 



