132 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



and New York over $400,000 per annum. Plymouth County 

 pays over 15,000 per year for flowers. Two to three hundred 

 dollars are quite commonly expended in cities for floral decora- 

 tions, for weddings, funerals and parties ; and at a reception in 

 New York a few months ago, $1,500 were expended for these 

 indispensable, beautiful, fragile creations that graced the rooms. 

 Their influence on our lives, so marked in its character, con- 

 duces to the best results. In the past we see it in the archi- 

 tecture of the ancients, in the ruins of their temples, finished 

 thousands of years ago, copies of living vegetation, carved with 

 a correctness that finds no rival to-day. Man first got his crude 

 ideas of building from trees. We pride ourselves on our smart- 

 ness, but from the dusty records of the past might we not learn 

 a lesson ? We copy from others. They copied from nature. 

 Flowers they worshipped, and in so doing they looked from 

 nature up to nature's God. 



This beautiful, Christianizing influence is felt in community 

 in many ways. Education, the culture of flowers, exquisite 

 taste and refinement of character, go hand in hand. Who ever 

 saw an untidy house with flowers in the window ? The instance 

 is not known of a person thoroughly bad who loved flowers. 

 The good and the beautiful are inseparably connected. Farmers 

 of Plymouth County, why do your sons leave the homestead so 

 distasteful for other occupations ? Why do they behold visions 

 of ease in the merchant's or manufacturer's residence, and look 

 forward to the time when they, too, shall be gentlemen ? It is 

 because they have a false idea of the farmer's vocation. The 

 surroundings are repulsive, not necessarily so, but from habit 

 that prevents expenditures for anything that will not sell. The 

 fajrmer's profession is the most noble and elevating one on earth. 

 Maiii was created a farmer. He cannot live in health unless he 

 tills ithe soil. He need not emulate the beast in labor, and so 

 unfit the mind for intellectual culture. Intelligent labor, with 

 modern machinery, should shorten the season of severe labor, 

 and give more time for mental improvement. Go to the city. 

 The merchant, weary in his counting-room, and fearful lest 

 some midnight robber should deprive him of his stocks and 

 bonds, seeing notliing but brick walls on every side, sighs for 

 pure air, for pastures green, and flowers. He remembers with 

 pleasure the girl that brought him roses at school when a boy, 



