STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. Ill 



makes one hot, but it is a blessed sort of work and if Eve had 

 had a spade in Paradise and had known what to do with it, we 

 should not have had all that sad business of the apple." And 

 I think it is so. If more of us had a spade and dug in the 

 garden there would be a good deal less melancholy in this world 

 and a good deal better feeling with us all. 



It is sometimes said, " Does it pay to have flowei; gardens? " 

 It does pay. Nearly everything that is needed to make the farm 

 beautiful in the long run will pay in dollars and cents. I am 

 not urging it solely on that account. Life is more than meat 

 and the body more than raiment. It pays to elevate life. mind, 

 tastes, thoughts. 



Xow I am going to ask }Ou for just a few moments to step 

 inside the house. First of all, let your home be within your 

 means. Xext, let your home be harmonious. Do not go to one 

 store and buy a carpet, at another and buy your wall paper, at 

 another and buy your shades, — without any thought of the other. 

 Let it be harmonious. It is said that some of our leading 

 physicians now in some of their most dangerous cases, particu- 

 larly of nerve trouble, are simply putting their patients in 

 harmonious surroundings and that the cure is wonderful. But 

 I do not say by this that harmony makes the home beautiful, for 

 I can imagine the home beautiful even with a red carpet, blue 

 paper and green shades. — for the home is what the heart and 

 the soul make it. 



I remember when my little boy was between two and three 

 years old we visited at the home of an uncle. He had just had 

 a most beautiful new house built. It had stained glass in many 

 places, it was polished and made of the most beautiful wood. 

 We stayed there two weeks and when we went back to our 

 home, our farm, which had none of these beauties, he sat down 

 in his little chair in the dining-room, and as he rocked back and 

 forth he looked all about the walls and I thought, " He is con- 

 trasting his home with his uncle's." But he looked up to me 

 with a smile on his face and he said, " Mamma, my home does 

 look better to me than Uncle Hennie's house." And that was 

 it, his home looked better to him than some one else's house. 

 That is the home beautiful, that looks better to us than any one's 

 house. 



I am going to speak just here about the most beautiful of all 

 plants, and that is our children. This question should be turned 



