PARK AND CEMETERY. 
223 
CULTIVATING A SENSE 07 BEAUTY.* 
The general subject for the evening is landscape 
gardening, and in considering it we de not wish to 
confine ourselves to its mere technical meaning, as 
the art of forming an artificial landscape — but look 
at in the broader sense as the art of a right under- 
standing and use of the beauty of that wonderful 
kingdom which God has created and used to dec- 
orate and make beautiful this terrestrial home of 
ours, and to speak of the art not as of itself an end 
but rather as a means to the higher end of helping 
those who come after us into a broader, fuller, better 
life than our own. It has been said that the strength 
of a nation is not measured by its natural defenses 
and resources but rather by the strength of the 
patriotism of its citizens. * * * The only 
possible source from which the America of tomor- 
row can gain such citizens isjfrom the boys of today 
— and the child laid bare the root of all human pro- 
gress, who, when a preacher in a tirade against the 
folly of youth said in a voice of thunder, ‘ ‘What are 
boys good for?” answered in childish treble, “Good 
to make men of!” And how our society can 
help to make noble and patriotic men out of our 
boys is what we are to talk of to-night. 
Among all the sources of human happiness there 
is none with greater potentiality of pleasure than 
those which come through our sense of beauty. 
This ability to feel and enjoy beauty is as truly a 
part of the gift of life that comes to every child as 
any other power, and to rob him of it or allow it to 
perish through lack of use, is as cruel, as monstrous 
a thing as to rob him of any other gift of God. 
Ruskin tells us that every human conception of 
beauty has its origin in and finds its highest expres- 
sion in some thought of the Creator expressed in 
material things. And the ability to in some degree 
understand and enter into this thought is a gossamer 
chain binding every child to the Father of us all, and 
by which it is possible for the child to feel its way 
out into a fuller understanding of God’s love. 
Often, O, how often these gossamer links are broken 
because of our thoughtlessness! The startled mother 
or teacher asks: “But when and how did I fail?” I 
can best suggest an answer by telling of the little girl 
who when asked her name, replied “Mary.” “But 
what is your other name?” “Just Mary.” “But you 
must have some other name ; what else does your 
mother call you?’ 1 “ 0 ,Mary mustn’ttouch!” What 
apathetic comment on the restrictions of that child’s 
life. Can you help a child to appreciate and enjoy 
Milton or Ruskin by strapping him into a chair and 
reading to him from those authors. Can you ex- 
pect a boy to learn to love the garden by keeping 
him at work with a lawn mower or a hoe when all 
nature is calling him out into the broader, fuller, 
freer life of the woods and fields? I venture to 
assert there is not a dozen children in all this town 
but what have come to their fathers, mothers, and 
* Extracts from a paper read by Prot. W. W. Tracy at the recent an- 
nual meeting of the Michigan State Horticultural Society, Ann Arbor, 
Mich. 
teaci rs. times without number, with something, in 
whic thing and the God who made it they saw some 
beat ty, and have been :-ent away more or less impa- 
tiently, and told not to bother but get his lessons 
or do his work. 
It is said that men value everything in propor- 
tion to the difficulty of obtaining it, and there cer- 
tainty is a sense in which this is true, but all that 
man holds most dear comes to him as a free gift. 
* * * A Vanderbilt may build and shut 
me out from a Biltmore, but the beauty of the sky, 
the air, the water, the trees, the flowers are not 
more his than mine. It seems to me that children 
instinctively, naturally, see and feel this and 
the feeling that possession is essential to the 
enjoyment of beauty never comes but through perni- 
cious influences and always roils and makes turbid 
the springs of pleasure in the beauty which is every- 
where about us. And this is the real cause why we 
ourselves get so little good from this best of all our 
gifts, and are so indifferent to developing its possibil- 
ities in our children. Why should the fact that 
yonder elm stands on land to which my neighbor 
holds the title deeds lessen in the least my enjoy- 
ment of the graceful droop of its branches ? Why 
should my enjoyment of the beautiful colors of the 
lily be lessened by the fact that it grows in my neigh- 
bor's meadows or garden? True I may not pick it, 
nor use it to add grandeur to my dinner table, nor 
yet take it to the market for sale; but if I truly love 
it I shall know that nowhere can it be so gracefully 
poised, be so beautiful as where nature placed it, 
and so shall have no desire to pick it but shall en- 
joy it most just where it is and can be most 
beautiful. 
The view given herewith shows the fountain 
flanked by two good specimens of Betula Alba, in 
G T niondale Cemetery, Allegheny, Pa. In front o 
the fountain is a foliage bed on the design of a 
Maltese cross, composed of Echeveria and Alternan- 
thera, 17 feet by 17 feet in dimensions. The grace- 
ful white birch trees produce charming effects when 
the fountain is playing. 
