THE COUNTRY HOME [CHAPTER 
cold-storage of facts. In this way a parent is often 
the very best possible teacher — because compan- 
ion. I would not have lost the lessons learned 
from my father, as together we went about the 
fields, for all that I gathered at academies and col- 
leges. Froebel says, “Let parents become chil- 
dren with children, and all together go to school to 
Mother Nature.” Give every boy and girl such 
books as “‘Hodge’s Nature Study and Life,” and 
““Comstock’s Insect Life,”” and keep them well 
supplied with the Bulletins from experiment 
stations. Besure that your laboratory is furnished 
with a good microscope and other appliances 
for accurate investigation. With your boys and 
girls not only grow crops, but test, examine, inves- 
tigate, and compare. Above all, let every child be 
educated to understand that there is no glory supe- 
rior to that of creating a better cereal or fruit, and 
in general terms carrying creation forward toward 
perfection. This glorifies a country home as noth- 
ing else can — to make it, and all about it, face the 
future, to hold it in trust for those coming gen- 
erations which shall inherit, not only its present 
worth, but that increment of betterment which we 
have been able to bring about. 
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