RURAL AND VILLAGE 



attention away from less attractive things. 

 It is one of the privileges of art to make its 

 disposition of beauty so vivid and forceful that 

 a study of it leads us to forget to look for 

 unpleasant features. This is one of the truths 

 which we need to bear in mind in our attempts 

 to beautify the home. 



TOO many of us fall into the mistake of 

 thinking that beauty is necessarily ex- 

 pensive. It is not so. Beauty is cheap, in the 

 sense that it is to be had for the taking. We 

 need not go without beautiful trees and shrubs 

 and vines because we lack money with which to 

 buy them of the growers. The nurseryman 

 has not the monopoly of all that is desirable in 

 this respect. Go into the fields and forests, 

 and go with the seeing eye, and you will find 

 ample material for the ornamentation of the 

 home grounds material quite as desirable as 

 that which the dealer offers you at a good, 

 round price. So long as we can have native 

 shrubs like the Clethra and the Elder and the 

 Spirea, the wild Rose, the Dogwoods, and the 

 Alders, and many others that I need not men- 

 tion here, and such vines as the Celastrus, the 



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