ADVICE FOR LACKLAND 



VILLAGE AND COUNTRY ROAD-SIDE 



Every Christian dweller, in village or in 

 country, owes a duty to his road-side; which, 

 if he neglects, he relapses— horticulturally 

 speaking — into heathenism. This duty is to 

 maintain order and neatness; and he is no 

 more relieved of this duty because the high- 

 way is assigned over to public uses, than he is 

 relieved of any other duty whose accomplish- 

 ment must of necessity contribute to the pub- 

 lic convenience and public education, as well 

 as to his own. Because my front entry is 

 shared, for all legitimate purposes, with my 

 friends and chance callers, shall I therefore 

 treat it with neglect and allow the dust and 

 cobwebs to accumulate about it, while I en- 

 sconce myself churlishly in my well-swept 

 den? Yet, every visitor — unless he be a vag- 

 abond fruit-stealer, or an equally vagabond 

 bird-killer — comes up the road-way: and if 

 you choose to put him through a course of 

 scoriae, and old tins, and tansy tufts, and 

 briary heaps of stones along your road-side, 

 you might as benevolently and as prudently, 

 (so far as the growing tastes of your children 



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