9« 
that keenest of observers, the Prince of Naturalists, in one 
of his most delightful essays declared the cultivation of a 
garden to be "the purest of human pleasures." This truly it 
was, and is, and to it may be added, it is one of the most 
potent factors in the uplifting of the race, — for a love of 
nature is an irresistible assertive force which made Falstaff in 
delirium to babble of green fields, and which prompted the 
more spiritual Keats with the sinking of his sun to exclaim — 
"I feel the flowers growing over me." So by nature we are 
"changed," to pass through nature purified. 
In the pushing out of the old by the sometimes objec- 
tionable intrusions of the new, let us be thankful that an 
abundance of the products of the best "gone on before" sur- 
vives, that the Germantown we live in, like the "Towne" of 
the Fathers, is yet an attraction to the stranger, the pride of 
its every citizen, "the earthly Paradise" towards which the 
thoughts of its children absent ever longingly reach, and to 
which when free they in person lovingly return, for in spite 
of every pressure, every alteration, every "improvement," it 
yet continues a happy, healthy, vigorous, "greene country 
towne," a "thing of beauty" constant, which promises to be 
"a joy forever." 
EEHoa, 
