three] growing the HOUSE 



lifted drudgery into enterprise. The shop is a 

 needed alliance of mechanics with agriculture. It 

 not only makes tools, but better- rounded characters ; 

 and it widens the power of our young folks. 



We are living in an age of science. This requires 

 that we shall readjust our land culture to precise 

 methods. The tendency is to smaller homesteads, 

 better tilled. We are learning to intensify and per- 

 fect, and so to get our harvests gradually up toward 

 a maximum. In order to accomplish this, our chil- 

 dren must be educated to scientific methods of seeing 

 and hearing, as well as doing. Before grammar and 

 arithmetic must come the art of using the senses. 

 Entomology has become a part of good farming. We 

 must know our friends among the insects from the 

 foes. All this brings us to another differentiation 

 in house-growing. We must have a laboratory — 

 a room where chemistry, geology, botany, entomol- 

 ogy, ornithology supplement land-culture and tree- 

 culture. It should be a large and well-lighted 

 room. Mine is over the shop. One corner is fur- 

 nished for chemical experiments, another for botany, 

 and another for entomology; but altogether, these 

 combined illustrate their application to horticul- 

 ture. All about us are cross-bred corns, beans, and 



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