1911 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



117 



Our Homes 



By A. I. Root 



Put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem. . . . 

 Loose thyself from the bands of thy neck, O captive 

 daughter of Zion. ... Ye have sold yourselves for 

 naught.— Isaiah 22 : 1, 2,!3. 



When we arrived here about the first of 

 November I noticed, almost the first thing, 

 that our Bougainvillea was almost defoli- 

 ated by tlie sort of measuring worm I have 

 before mentioned. Instead of being a 

 "thing of beauty" it was just almost an 

 unsightly weed. We first tried hand-pick- 

 ing; but as the worms have tlie queer fash- 

 ion of mimicking lifeless twigs it was al- 

 most impossible to detect them; and, al- 

 though 1 killed dozens of them every day, 

 we didn't seem to get ahead of them at all. 

 Somebody suggested Paris green; but it 

 proved of little or no avail; but another 

 friend told me arsenate of lead would stick 

 to the leaves, and must prove death to any 

 leaf-eating insect. You may remember I 

 spoke of tliis insecticide in connection with 

 the flea beetle on my wonderberry-plants. 

 I didn't try it, because our Medina drug- 

 gists couldn't sell less than a can of it, it 

 being a sort of paste. Now, although much 

 has been said about the extortion of Florida 

 merchants, especially to new comers from 

 the North, I found here no trouble in get- 

 ting a dime's worth for my experiment. 



As I was somewhat vexed with the con- 

 trary worms (that refused to die) I took my 

 spray-pump and gave all three of my vines 

 a pretty severe spraying. Well, it fixed the 

 worms, sure, and came pretty near fixing 

 the plants also. They presented a sorry ap- 

 pearance, sure, until about the first of the 

 new year; and to-day, Jan. 25, when I went 

 out and stood by the front door the words of 

 the first sentence of my text "sort of " bub- 

 bled up almost involuntarily. The plant 

 had so far recovered from its fiery ordeal of 

 worms and poison that it was indeed once 

 more "putting on its beautiful garments." 

 Why, I would almost take a trip to Florida 

 to see this beautiful plant in full bloom, 

 right out in the open air, in all its bewitch- 

 ing beauty, if for nothing else. It is a rank 

 hardy grower; and the new foliage, when it 

 first comes out, makes it a handsome plant, 

 even before the gorgeous bloom covers and 

 encircles it. 



Last evening, before retiring, I spent some 

 time reading from the dailies about the re- 

 cent revelations in regard to buying and 

 selling votes away off in beloved Ohio, the 

 land of my birth. The saddest part of it 

 was to read that not only men who stood 

 high in office, and in the estimation of peo- 

 ple generally, but even ministers of the gos- 

 pel, veritable leaders in " the paths of right- 

 eousness," had confessed themselves guilty 

 of this terrible offense against not only ^rood 

 government but all government. As I 



looked again at the Bougainvillea I breathed 

 an inward prayer that out of it all, and 

 through it all, Zion might "awake" and 

 once more "put on her beautiful garments " 

 of honesty, truth, temperance, and virtue. 

 For years past the Anti-saloon League has 

 been perplexed and mortified to find that 

 the men who professed to be all that is noble 

 and good, should, in some unaccountable 

 way, at just the last moment, be found over 

 in the hands of the enemy of all that is 

 good and pure and true. We guessed where 

 the trouble was, but there seemed no way 

 of getting hold of evidence. May the Lord 

 be praised that our prayers for years past 

 are being answered. We have at least one 

 fearless and righteous judge who "dares to 

 be a Daniel," and who keeps right on en- 

 forcing the law, even though anonymous 

 letters have been received threatenmg his 

 life, if he dues not "let up " in his crusade 

 to punish the wicked. May God be praised, 

 also, for the number who have come for- 

 ward in a manly and honest way and "own- 

 ed up" and "taken their medicine" with- 

 out making any wry faces. Truly, there is 

 a prospect of a wliolesale throwing-off of the 

 old-time "filthy rags," and donning the 

 "beautiful garments" of the new Jerusa- 

 lem. Is it not indeed really true that we 

 are "shaking ourselves from the dust "and 

 "loosing ourselves from the bands" that 

 have been about "the necks "of at least 

 some of us? 



The principal excuse I have heard for this 

 kind of work is that everybody else was do- 

 ing it. These two ministers who confessed 

 probably received such a small salary they 

 just had to do as their people did, to live. 

 It seems to me a little funny that a vote- 

 selling church should be able to pay a min- 

 ister at all. Very likely it was the women 

 of the congregation who paid the salary. 

 And, by the way, if I have got it right, 

 there was one township (or precinct) where 

 every single voter was disfranchised for five 

 years; the W. C. T. U. women sent in a plea 

 to permit tliem, under the circumstances, 

 to do the voting. May God hasten the day 

 wlien good women shall do at least some of 

 the voting. 



And now for the concluding words of our 

 text: " Ye have sold yourselves for naught." 

 In speaking of Senators Lorimer and Holt- 

 slaw, on p. 600, Sept. 15, last year, I quoted, 

 "A reputation was swept away that the 

 man had toiled 40 years to build up, all for 

 the sake of 4700 dollars (dirty dollars) that 

 the man did not need." Well, just as I 

 write, an effort is being made to let the man 

 go without punishment, although he him- 

 self confessed to the crime. The affair of 

 Senator Lorimer has also been submitted to 

 a committee, and this committee (?) has 

 "whitewashed'' it over and reported no 

 cause for action. " It won't do," so some of 

 our big men say, to punish crime and en- 

 force the laws when the ofTender stands 

 "away up" in the social scale; but, may 

 the Lord be praised, the people, the good 

 honest men of our land, are making such a 



