FINE ARTS OF A COUNTRY HOME 243 



We are going to lay more emphasis hereafter on 

 the simply beautiful; we shall have a keener dislike 

 for piles of old brush and unused litter, as well as 

 for that indescribable confusion of purpose which has 

 so generally characterized farm life. However, be 

 careful not to overdo this tendency and allow any- 

 where about your house and grounds a suggestion 

 of mere brains and wealth. It is the hand that we 

 need to glorify and the country home must never 

 fail to honor hand-craft. 



It was a great day for the country when the Agri- 

 cultural College Land Grant passed through Con- 

 gress. The Civil War was raging at a horrible cost 

 to the land, but this bill was nearly compensatory. 

 No one knew it then, but they can know it now. 

 Every State is being organized industrially, so that 

 education no longer means the ability to parse a Latin 

 verb, but the ability to understand and parse well 

 the songs of the bees and the trills of the brooks 

 and the harmonies that make up garden and orchard. 



It is a wonderful thing when our colleges step 

 in front of our troubles and tell us how to duplicate 

 our crops, at the same time mastering their enemies. 

 It is a new day indeed and a new purport for educa- 

 tion, for it makes of us entomologists, or in the 

 broader sense biologists. The use of proper spraying 

 materials compelled orchard owners to become prac- 

 tical chemists. The bungling work that sprays the 

 wrong stuff on guess work will accomplish nothing, 

 but in all cases the brain is awakened to direct the 



