PARK AND CEMETERY 
83 
fe 
IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATIONS. 
Conducted by 
Frances Copley Seavey. 
Leavt the World a pleasanter place than you found it. 
MORE AND BOLDER, SUGGESTIONS. 
If each Woman’s Club in these United States 
would for one year give its attention to leaving the 
world a pleasanter place to the eye than they found 
it, by looking after the exterior decoration of their 
own homes as well as of every home reached by 
their influence, the country would be transformed — 
transmuted is a better word, because the same ma- 
terials would have been used in producing an en- 
tirely different effect. 
Should the members of any one Improvement 
Society paint their houses and plant their grounds 
to the end of producing an harmonious whole, that 
is, consider each place in relation to its surround- 
ings instead of as an independent unit; the street, 
or neighborhood, or village so treated would, if 
the work was done according to good art, be nearly 
unrecognizable. 
To secure satisfactory results in either case, the 
advice of artists in color and in planting must be 
followed. 
Such advice is essential in the choice of the 
colors and shades and combinations of paints to be 
used on the several buildings, and in the style of 
planting adopted for the various grounds. 
Far better results will be attained by letting one 
artist direct the work for an entire neighborhood, 
because each place will then be more completely 
considered in relation to every other place, and the 
colors of the houses and the distribution of the plants 
will be in accordance with a plan which will have 
as a basis — breadth. And breadth, in the artistic 
sense, is of the first importance in every picture 
whether made on canvas or on greensward. 
Where such a scheme is carried out, neighboring 
houses, while not of the same color, will either har- 
monize or agreeably contrast in hue, and will ami- 
cably agree with their setting of foliage. 
It would be a very pretty bit of work for a 
Landscape Gardener and he must needs have a very 
“pretty taste” to develop such a scheme successfully. 
But what an improvement it would mean over 
the hit-or-miss color effects and the unrelated plant- 
ing now found everywhere. 
Should this plan become general, we might all 
live in pictures. 
In hamlets, villages or towns, and in small 
cities, the homes of those in very moderate circum- 
stances, those who are “the poor” of large cities, 
could be included in the treatment so that their oc- 
cupants might also live in pictures. Life for many, 
a very great many, people is rather humdrum and 
for all such, to live in a picture, and to be made to 
understand that they are doing so, must add a zest 
and to the sensitive, a thrill, to living. 
And such things are worth while. They count 
in squaring the benefits of wealth. There is no bet- 
ter way for the rich man to help his less fortunate 
brother than by making his home life pleasanter. 
It is an inexpensive work in comparison with many 
modes of charity and it strikes to the root of Ameri- 
can institutions. 
The home life of our country is the acknow- 
ledged basis of its excellence, it lies back of the 
school, and it is worth while to do all we can to 
make it pleasant. This is true even when the mat- 
ter is considered from a selfish point of view, for 
every attractive, well cared for home, no matter 
how humble, enhances the value of every other 
home in its vicinity. Not only that, but pleasant, 
attractive, well cared for homes are sure to be bet- 
ter in a sanitary sense than those untidily kept. So 
that not only is the value of the richer man's real 
e.state increased by his efforts to better conditions 
for his neighbors — even his remote neighbors — but 
his personal comfort and health, and the comfort 
and health of his entire family are also increased. 
Then too, the laboring man who sits under a 
pleasant arbor to smoke his pipe when his day’s 
work is done makes a better citizen than the one 
who spends all his leisure sitting around the saloon. 
And if a pleasant garden makes life more agree- 
able to the man of the house how much more does 
it stand for in the life of the house mother and the 
little people. If you doubt that it means much to 
them, you have but to carry a basket of simple 
flowers through a street of tenement houses in the 
first city you enter. You will feel like an angel 
come from Paradise as you hand out the fragrant 
Sweet Peas or bright faced Pansies to the dirty little 
children who will flock eagerly around, and as you 
note the contrast between the fresh country air and 
the stifling atmosphere and squalid surroundings. 
Probably those same children have never seen a 
young lamb or a little calf frolic on the green grass. 
There are plenty of them who never see anything 
pure and lovely. 
Can such surroundings develop a love of civil- 
ized habits of life? The pity of it, that any child must 
grow up without knowledge of green trees, fresh 
grass and the daisy chain! 
We would better do all in our power to make 
every home within reach of our influence, our means, 
or our hands as pleasant as possible, for even the 
