PARK AND CEMETERY. 
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SOUTHERN VEGETATION. 
Among the finest “plantations” remaining in 
South Carolina, Magnolia Manor — the estate of C. P. 
Hastie, Esq., upon the banks of the Ashley River at 
Drayton, S. C., is an excellent type. The original 
mansion was burnt during the rebellion, but the 
beautiful lawn of St. Augustine grass, the wide 
avenue of stately live oaks leading from the high- 
way to the mansion and fine old garden enhance in 
beauty each year. The home grounds of Magnolia 
are rich in flowers and vegetation — ilex vomitoria, 
olea Iragrans, olea americana — each twenty feet high 
and magnolia grandiflora, taxodium sempervirens. 
nyssa sylvatica and liquidamber styraciflua give 
it a luxuriant semi-tropical effect. As for roses such 
as Banksian, Marechal Neil, cloth of gold and most 
of the teas during their flowering period attract 
numbers of visitors wintering in the south. 
The accompanying illustration gives but a scant 
idea of the reality. Bounded by liquidambers, sour- 
gums, bald cypress, etc., is a charming lake of fresh 
water. The photograph well illustrates the peculiar 
beauty of the Florida moss — as also the bank of In- 
dian azaleas upon the opposite shore. On another 
part of the estate is a riverside walk shaded by live 
oaks and evergreen magnolias and enlivened by a 
border of profuse flowering azaleas. 
Of the few remaining estates in South Carolina 
where the luxurious richness, dignified stateliness 
and impressive character typical of anti- bellum 
days is preserved — Magnolia is certainly the best 
with which we are familiar. Emil Mische. 
THE COUNTRY SCHOOL-HOUSES. 
That the leaven of art out-of-doors is working 
throughout the country is evidenced by the follow- 
ing extract from a Des Moines, Iowa, agricultural 
paper, which says: 
If the traveler from a distant country or state 
were to judge of the Western farmer by the appear- 
ance of the school houses alone, he would be forced 
to the conclusion that the patrons were mortgage 
stricken, debt-ridden creatures, men without taste 
or refinement, and who were taking the surest way 
to drive their children from the country to the town. 
The school house in winter usually stands out bleak 
and lonely on the wind-swept 
prairie, exposed to the full fury 
of the blizzard and exposed to the 
tornado and wind storm in sum- 
mer. Usually it is without a tree 
or shrub or a flower; bleak, for- 
lorn, desolate and suggestive of 
anything besides comfort. The 
sun beats down on it through the 
live-long summer day. The hot 
winds from the south make the 
children long for shade, the fish 
pond or the swimming hole. 
There is nothing to break the 
monotony, nothing to please the 
eye, everything is suggestive of 
the hard grind; without anything 
to awaken the imagination to re- 
lieve cither the school work or life 
itself of this dreary monotony. 
The farmer will take pains to 
shelter his live stock with a grove, 
to place evergreens between his 
home and the winter’s blast, to 
strew shrubs over his lawn, and train vines over 
his porch, but he leaves the school house in which 
his children spend so many hours in the most plastic 
period of their existence without anything to 
suggest that life is anything more than a weary 
round of toil. Brethren, these things ought not so 
to be. They need not so to be. There are enough 
readers of Wallace’s Farmer in nearly every school 
district in the state to work a reformation, that 
would not only add a pleasing feature to the land- 
scape, but do very much to make the lives of school 
children happier and to bind them to the farm 
instead of forcing them in disgust with country life 
to seek their fortunes in the towns and cities to their 
own great loss. 
* * 
There is now a very encouraging movement 
among the educators in many of the states to im- 
prove the school grounds — to help in nature study. 
Magnolia Garden.— Magnolia Manor, Drayton, S, C. 
