100 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



How man}' a woman who breathes the close air of the factory 

 until the hectic flush tells of a life almost spent wishes she could 

 have been taught a work that should bring her daily nearer to 

 nature. 



This work is one that she dare not, cannot, learn by herself, the 

 risks are so great. She can catch up the broken threads in the 

 loom, and scarce gives them a thought ; the great machine seems 

 to her to work of itself. But the tender plants, the opening buds, 

 the flowers, the bees, the soft little chickens — how dare she, 

 untaught, handle these mysterious things direct from heaven? 

 Might she not chance to put out some of this life given to cheer 

 and brighten the world ? And she looks with feelings of wonder 

 and shame at girls who inherit the right, the opportunity, to know 

 something of all this, yet flee from it in their ignorant contempt 

 of it. 



What a cry of dismay is heard at a proposition to send a girl 

 from home to learn house-keeping ! and to talk of sending the 

 daughters of farmers away from their homes to study horticulture 

 may seem at the present time rank heresy ; but this must soon 

 come, like all other things for the good of man. 



Seldom do we find the merchant, the doctor, the lawyer, attempt- 

 ing to train their own sons to enter their own lines of life ; they 

 send them to some one else for that training ; and we also find the 

 agriculturist sending his sons to schools and colleges affording 

 scientific agricultural training. Then why may not his daughter 

 in like manner be sent where she may obtain a scientific training 

 in horticulture? And would it not be well sometimes to send her 

 away for training in house-keeping? She should be taught that 

 duty at home. But is the daughter always so taught at home? 

 How hard it is to teach an unwilling daughter ! How much easier 

 it is for the mother to do it all herself! There are duties for every 

 daughter that she does not usually incline to learn ; indeed it is 

 doubtful if any mortal inclines to duty as freely as ducks go to 

 water. 



I low carefully considered is our selection of the seed and the 

 scion ; how careful is our training of the colts and the steers ; but 

 how like a weed in the fields, too often, grows the daughter of the 

 house ! And then how unfitted she will be to take a place in the 

 great world of work. And if it is as an orjihan she must enter 

 there, with hind as her inheritance, and little else but her land and 



