230 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



am certainly in favor of making strenuous efforts to unite anywhere 

 from five to ten or more school districts into one. If the township 

 is very populous make it two instead of one. I think such a move- 

 ment would appeal to the voters and tax payers. Let us try to make 

 possible this idea of a central school location where we "can have 

 our children instructed in their early days in the rudiments of hor- 

 ticulture and become acquainted with the beauties of nature. It 

 seems to me a vital point to be considered by us who are tax payers. 

 In five years our teachers will become capable instructors. I hope 

 this idea will soon be taken up in our state. 



Mr. J. S. Trigg (Iowa) : I wish to say to the everlasting 

 credit of the state of Minnesota that it possesses the nearest ap- 

 proach to the model school house grounds of any I ever saw. I 

 w^ill not name the county, but it is somewhere near where my friend 

 (Mr. Freeman) lives. The interesting paper presented by the lady 

 this afternoon is really too much of a good thing when you con- 

 sider what most of the school house grounds in the west are. It 

 is something too far in advance. Every man can take something 

 out of the paper and apply it in his own locality, and what I want 

 to say can be put into practical operation by any one. 



Trees constitute the first element in the beautifying of school 

 house grounds. The legislature of the state of Iowa absolutely re- 

 quires the planting of, I think, fifteen or twenty trees in the country 

 districts of that state. The great trouble has been that while the- 

 trees have been planted there has been no fence placed around the 

 property to keep people from hitching their horses to the trees. The 

 first thing I want to do is to insist that there should be a substantial 

 fence built around the school house grounds so that no unregenerate 

 voter can come there and hitch his horse to the trees. So first put 

 a fence around the school house grounds and then plant the trees. 

 This particular school house that I mentioned before is located about 

 fifteen miles from the Iowa line. It has a bell in the tower, a few 

 natural shade trees and a few evergreens around it and is sur- 

 rounded with a four-board fence so a man cannot drive into the 

 grounds and hitch his horses to the trees. As I ride by on the rail- 

 road I always notice that school house. The schoolma'am that 

 teaches in that school house I know is pretty ; she must be. If I 

 was a young man living in that vicinity I would go to see that school 

 ma'ahi. I know she would make a good wife for any man. 



Mr. Oliver Gibbs : That was an excellent paper that the lady 

 read, but it was way up among the clouds and sunshine of the ideal 

 state, and I am glad to see an effort made to get down to bed rock. 

 If you have got to keep a fence around the grounds to keep the un- 

 regenerate voter from hitching his horses to the trees what is there 

 to prevent him jumping over the fence and cutting the young trees 

 for whip stocks ? The first thing to do is to organize a local horti- 

 cultural society in every school district, and then to commence with 

 the education of these same unregenerate voters, and when we have 

 done that we can go ahead with our improvements. 



Mr. O. M. Lord : I had the question asked nearly a year ago 

 as to how all this beautifying that was proposed should be done, 

 and the answer was to elect women on the school board 



