HORTICULTURAL EDUCATION FOR WOMEN. 103 



mind seemed a temple in the heavens, now crowns many and many 

 a hill-top, calling our youth to its halls ; and the way thereto, by 

 comparison, is now a flowery one, but it is also one that consumes 

 the freshness of youth, ami leads from home. 



That simple school, for which Mary Lyon toiled so long and well 

 — that school, too, has kept up with the onward march of learning. 

 Girls no longer go there to learn house-keeping. They go to learn 

 to be teachers, and the curriculum of study is arranged for the 

 " higher education," and designed to make learned women. 



What we need to provide now is not this higher education ; 

 it is a new and different one ; an education in horticulture and 

 home-culture, that shall make a happier girlhood — happier, 

 because hands are full and bodies healthy; happier, because 

 brains are less strained for book lore, and more alive to nature's 

 truths, and vivified with a practical knowledge of what goes to 

 make health, happiness, home, and wealth. Among all the schools 

 of our laud — and their name is legion — there is not one to offer 

 this to our girls. Is not now the time to make one that shall meet 

 this requirement? Is it not to this Society — the Horticultural 

 Society par excellence of the country — that we may look, to show 

 us how this horticultural education can be given? You who know 

 so well the difficulties that beset the way, and have shown us that 

 they are not insurmountable for woman, show us still farther, that 

 we may not make our horticultural training one-sided, but that in 

 teaching how to care for and beautify the land, we may also teach 

 the Uttle woman to care for and render cheerful, healthful, and 

 happy her home and all its surroundings. 



And if this education must — as it now seems in very many 

 cases that it must — be obtained elsewhere than at her home, may 

 she then go back to her home, however humble it be, as a ray of 

 sunshine ; a faithful, loving, capable daughter, there to remain 

 till some one shall win her away to be the light of a new home. 



Discussion. 



Mrs. Ednah D. Cheney was called on by the Chair, and said 

 that the meeting recalled to her mind the one held under the aus- 

 pices of this Society and in this very room, with the venerable 

 Ex-President Wilder present, for the purpose of promoting the 

 horticultural education of women. It was then hoped that the 



