1908 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



1083 



schoolhouse; but the girl had gone, nobody 

 knew where. Perhaps she covered up her tracks 

 for spite. He did not succeed in finding her. 

 Perhaps he thought she might let him know 

 where she was. Time passed, and he married 

 somebody else in a distant land, and she also 

 married somebody else. Both of them brought 

 up a family; but, if I am correct about it, each 

 of them kept looking back to that boyhood and 

 girlhood courtship, and perhaps thought how 

 much happier they would have been had things 

 turned out otherwise. Now, this was all wrong. 

 It is as wicked for the father and mother of a 

 family to look back in that way as it was for 

 Lot's wife to disobey Jehovah's command by 

 "looking back." When we are once married, 

 especially after we have had children, it is in one 

 sense a crime to look back. It is treason to the 

 partner to whom you have promised to be true. 

 Well, now for the rest of my romance. Forty 

 years have passed. The man lost his wife, and 

 later the girl (or elderly woman) lost her husband. 

 Although more than a thousand miles apart they 

 two found out about it, corresponded, and then 

 got together and were married. After all the 

 years andisome "heart-breaking anguish" (I won- 

 der if I am putting it too strong) they talked 

 over their old misunderstandings, begged each 

 other's pardon, and stood together hand in hand. 

 It looked as if both had become young again. I 

 ventured a little caution. I said, in substance, 

 "My friends, I am rejoiced to see you two hap- 

 pily united; but may I suggest to each one of 

 you that you are now old people.? You have 

 both lived to see a good share of human life. 

 You have settled down into ways and notions 

 that are not easy to break or overcome. It will 

 not be so easy for you to learn new things now 

 as w hen you were boy and girl in that old school- 

 house. May God watch over you both, and bless 

 and guide you." 



The man had a home, and owned property in 

 Arizona. He had lived there a great part of his 

 life. The new wife was accustomed to a cold 

 climate, where she had lived all of her life. 

 When I asked how they were going to manage 

 things she said to me, and perhaps partly in pleas- 

 antry, that, "for the sake of being with him, she 

 was willing to go to the ends of the earth," etc. 

 Well, she tried it for a little time in Arizona, 

 where the temperature is often 110 to 112 degrees 

 in the shade; but as she is a rather large heavy 

 woman the desert heat seemed to be rather de- 

 pressing on the romance of their honeymoon. 

 Then he, like a good husband, came back and 

 tried one winter in the cold climate of the North. 

 But I fear that the zero temperature was as severe 

 on his romantic ideas of early life as the desert 

 heat was on hers; and just at present there is more 

 than a thousand miles between them. I do not 

 mean that there has been any disagreement be- 

 tween the two. God forbid! but when they two 

 came to take a sensible view, as all people ought 

 to be able to do at their age, it seemed more con- 

 venient for them to live apart than to live to- 

 gether. 



Now, the moral I would draw from this, and 

 from all other events of a similar nature, is that 

 young people and sometimes middle-aged (and 

 may be elderly ones) get a foolish notion into 

 their heads that they "can not live" unless they 



can live togther. Then they soon get another 

 equally foolish notion, that " they can not /iie'^ 

 unless they are separated. A great part of this 

 is imagination. Love xw// go where it is sent. 

 It is your duty to love, cherish, and protect your 

 mother as long as she lives; and this is true, even 

 though she should not happen to be one of the 

 most lovable mothers in the world. The same 

 is true with the father, and with the children. 

 God gave us our fathers and mothers, and to 

 some he gave children. We can not escape the 

 responsibility that God has laid upon us; and 

 when two parties are united in the holy bonds of 

 mart"iage, it should be recognized in the same 

 way. " What God hath joined together, let not 

 man put asunder." In conclusion I wish to 

 .rake a clipping from an article in the Medina 

 Gazette, beixg one of a series written for that pa- 

 per by my good friend W. P. Root, who is just 

 now taking down these words: 



In the consideration of divorce there is one factor I have not 

 yet alluded to; and that is, that matrimonial dividend known as 

 the family baby. If there is one thing that should cause parents 

 to overlook the shortcomings and misdemeanors of each other it 

 is the helpless babe in the crib, smiling as it recognizes its la- 

 ther as he returns home, and then bestowing another smile, equal- 

 ly pleasant, on the mother who has watched it all day. If that 

 infant has a right to its two eyes and its two feet it has an equal 

 right to its two parents; and when I say parents I do not mean 

 simply bearers or breeders, as the word primarily meant, but two 

 guardians who will so nurture it as to develop the good and sup- 

 press the evil — or, rather, turn all the child's faculties into a good 

 channel; for what are called bad traits are simply good ones per- 

 verted. 



HIGH-PRESSURE 

 GARDENING 



By A. I. Root 



A STORY WITH A MORAL DOES IT HIT YOU.' 



Mr. Calvert, my son-in-law, recently purchas- 

 ed a piece of land adjoining his home. This 

 land had been cropped to death without proper 

 manuring, especially at the back end of the lot; 

 but we planted in it some field corn in order to 

 get a start and work it up. A few days ago I 

 was looking it over, and talking with a man after 

 he had cultivated and hoed it. I said: 



" Why, look here, Mr. Weibly, what does this 

 mean.? Here are two spots of magnificent-look- 

 ing corn away ahead of all the rest. What is the 

 reason — how does it happen.?" 



"Why, Mr. Root, that is where 1 put two 

 wheelbarrowloads of manure that I got out of 

 Mr. Calvert's poultry-house, and spread it around 

 on top of the ground; and with the cultivating 

 and hoeing, and the plenty of rain we have had, 

 it has just rotted and is working down to the 

 roots of the corn." 



It was indeed an astonishing object-lesson, and 

 shows that manure from the poultry-house, if 

 properly applied, is no small asset to the business, 

 besides the eggs and fowls for meat. 



A few days later, when our folks went down 

 to cut our beautiful piece of timothy, grown on 

 the Clark system, I was much astonished to find 

 two spots near Mr. Boyden's residence (another 

 son-in-law), where there was no timothy nor any 

 thing else. The heads of timothy around these 

 spots were almost as high as my head. While I 



