AGRICULTURE AN ART. 7 



should be developed and elevated. It is a common law that 

 every need has some supply near at hand ; create that need 

 and the supply will follow. What money and pecuniaiy offers 

 fail to effect, however liberal you may be in that direction, 

 taste and conviction arising from education will do. Adorn 

 your dwellings with flowers, and encourage your children to 

 cultivate them. Many a useful, natural bent in the young has 

 been lost by injudicious and thoughtless levity. Believe that 

 an hour is not lost which your wife, or your daughter, or your 

 son spends in the garden, among the flowers which they have 

 learned to love. Labor is relieved of half its toil when smiled 

 upon by the elegancies of life. I have been no heedless witness 

 of these facts, and the most industrious hands and the most 

 loving and motherly hearts have I found among those who cul- 

 tivated the tulip bed or nourished the rose bu^i in some corner 

 of the farm yard, amidst discouragements which would have 

 appalled the sterner sex had they been suffered to exist where 

 the corn and the potato patch stood. 



" The farmer's garden," says Elihii Burrit, " is the introduc- 

 tion to a large volume, of whicli every acre is a page, bearing 

 the marks of his character. Viewed in this light, the gardens 

 of New England are full of liopeful and instructive reading to 

 those who consult their chronicles. They show that science, 

 taste and successful industry have been brought to bear upon 

 agriculture. They mark the degree of mental culture and 

 refinement to which the farmers of the country have attained." 

 Let our common school teachers, I repeat, understand that 

 they are expected to communicate such knowledge or go with- 

 out employment, and my word for it, you will find them all apt 

 and fit for the task. In this town, close by, stands a noble 

 monument of gratitude to and love of the birthplace of one, 

 who went from you a boy and returned to an ovation such as 

 is seldom granted to what the world calls great men. Beneath 

 its roof stand volumes of wisdom, science, art, freely offered to 

 every citizen. Not far off is its duplicate library, in which are 

 choice books, and which I have been generously invited to con- 

 sult. Its lecture room affords easy facilities to any one to 

 listen to the eloquence or to quaff from the fountains of knowl- 

 edge, which the lyceura lecturer offers you. We admire such 

 generosity, such thoughtful care for the rising generation. 



