TWENTY-NINTH FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 



177 



bruised and broken roots. Call his attention to the little roots with 

 their network of feeders. Give him a microscope to examine the shield- 

 covered points that push their way through the earth to find food. 

 Give him your idea of a well-balanced top, and see how quickly he will 

 carry your thought into action by clipping the right branches, and now 

 will be a good time to give him the scientific theory of pruning, the 

 difference between pruning for shade and pruning for fruit. Children 

 take naturally to science, because they naturally love the trutH. They 

 want to know the truth about the things that interest them, and it is 

 easy to interest them, even in a hole to set a tree. Show him that you 

 have put the top dirt on one side and the bottom dirt on the other; that 

 when you set the tree you put the surface dirt around the roots because 

 it is already prepared, by the action of the sun and rain, for plant food, 

 and that the tree will thrive better for taking that precaution. 



When cultivating time comes, don't send your boy out to kill iveeds, 

 but rather tell him to loosen the soil about the trees an,d clear the 

 ground of everything that will rob the tree of moisture or plant food. 

 Fix the mind on life and growth, not on death and destruction, and the 

 weeds will incidentally disappear. It is the same with the garden of 

 the soul — cultivate the virtues and the vices will disappear. 



Life has become too strenuous. In our eager desire to make money 

 we forget to enjoy what we already have. Let us relax, become chil- 

 dren with our children. Stand still and listen until we feel our pulses 

 beating time to the throbbing of nature's heart. Some one has beauti- 

 fully said: "He who plants a tree by the wayside plants a thought of 

 God in the hearts of his fellow men." Let us take our children into 

 partnership with us and go on planting trees till our highways and by- 

 ways, our streets and alleyways become shady avenues, where birds and 

 squirrels will build their homes without fear of gun or sling in the hands 

 of depredating boys and men. For it is true that the boy who becomes 

 interested in plant life soon becomes interested in the sacredness of 

 animal life and loses his savage desire to kill and destroy. The God 

 thought planted in his breast is beginning to bear fruit. 



Disabuse children's minds of the idea that they go to school to get 

 an education so that they will not have to work with their hands, as 

 their fathers do, to itiake a living. But rather inculcate the idea that 

 they get an education so that they may work more intelligently at 

 whatever occupation they may choose to enter. I know a small girl 

 who is allowed to use the pruning shears on a few trees according to 

 her own fancy. She is ambitious to go to the University some day, so 

 that she may learn to become a landscape gardener; and why should 

 she not some day realize her dream of a home surrounded by grounds 

 made beautiful by her own hands? 



We want educated people in all ranks of life. Then work will become 



12 — F-GC 



