90 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1891. 



comforts and embellishments. Statesmen, divines, poets, men 

 of letters, inventors, mechanical constructors, musicians, artists, 

 directors of armies and civil governments, have never sprung 

 from the dissolute and degraded, and from what we term the 

 poverty-stricken abode. Many and many a time have they 

 sprung from the home of the poor, but could we enter these 

 homes we would find a refining influence somewhere within its 

 walls, or that a previous generation had possessed them in 

 abundance. We shall never see a reformer of morals, a Martin 

 Luther, advancing from the adobe structure of the Southwest ; 

 a poet or musician from the Georgia " Cracker," or the moun- 

 taineer hut of Tennessee ; nor a statesman from the abode of 

 the French Canadian ; but from them are more prone to come 

 the gambler, the desperado, and the licentious. 



The word home is one of the most vital in the English lan- 

 guage, of good Saxon origin, and it has a dominating power 

 equal to that of the Anglo-Saxon himself, who to-day dominates 

 the earth. The Anglo-Saxon has a true home wherever you find 

 him. The Gaul, the Spaniard, the Latin races, have no homes 

 in the real sense of the word, and it is largely due to the home 

 influences inherited through a thousand generations, that have 

 placed this race at the head of the human family. 



I have stated that the homes of New England are the best of 

 our whole country, but we cannot regard them as perfect — on the 

 contrary, far from it. There is much that we can criticise about 

 them. Their location has not always been selected with the 

 greatest discretion, their style of building is oftentimes hetero- 

 geneous enough to give delirium tremens to a well-studied 

 architect. Their sanitary conditions are not in accord with mod- 

 ern ideas of h3'^giene, and the artist shudders and hurries by lest 

 the inharmonious colors contaminate his well ordered ideas. 

 Town homes and country homes as far as the house is concerned, 

 are quite different things, and I am thankful, very thankful, 

 Mr. Chairman, that you gave me the subject of Rural Homes, 

 and not those of the city ; for where land is valued by the square 

 inch, and Mammon is the only God worshipped, my descrip- 

 tions, criticisms, and exhortations would be of as little value as 

 a minister's, but let us study a country home, what it can be. 



