R us tic A dornments. 
most liberal outlay, there is not one but is in some measure attainable by 
those who have but little leisure and most narrow means, and some indeed 
may be, and have been, cultivated most successfully by those who could not 
aspire even to the ordinary luxuries of middle life. If the poor man cannot 
have his picture gallery, he can still gratify his love of art by embellishing his 
walls with copies of works of great masters, brought within his reach by the 
multiplying skill of the copyist and the engraver ; if he cannot have a library, 
paneled with palm branches, and containing a collection of Aldines on vellum, 
and Caxtons worth twelve thousand guineas, he can still command elegant 
editions of the greatest historians, philosophers, and poets, to whom God ever 
gave the gift of expression. If he cannot afford pictures, he may have a 
“ garden of delights ; ” and if palms and orchids are forbidden fruit, he may 
every day experience a subdued but healthy pleasure amidst ferns and flowers . 
the rose will shake into his heart her perfume, and the lily recall to him the 
teachings of the Lord. In the adornment of the home it does not require a 
princely fortune to set up a vase of flowers, or an aquarium, or a stand of 
bees that shall sing to their master all day long and entrap every spare 
moment of leisure he may be able to afford to “ shepherd them.” He who 
lays out his garden in accordance with correct principles of taste, may find in 
it as much amusement, and as genuine a solace from the cark and care of life, 
as if it were a domain of thousands of acres—perhaps more so, for it is his 
own work, it represents his own idea, it is a part of himself, and hence 
redolent of heart-ease. 
It is an error common to writers to believe that the special subject on 
which the pen is engaged is of pre-eminent importance, and perhaps I may be 
yielding to this common weakness when I suggest that the embellishments of 
the household embrace the highest of its attractions apart from the love which 
lights the walls within. The prose of life is good—food, clothing, safety must 
be first secured ; but the poetry is better, for though the body must be fed, 
it is chiefly because of the soul it shelters that it must be kept sound and 
clean. The pleasures of the garden, the tending and taming of household 
pets, the culture of choice plants in the greenhouse and the window, seem to 
me much more remunerative, hoth intellectually and morally, than even the 
study of the higher departments of art, because of their suitability to all taste, 
and means, and their directly educative power, for they keep us near to nature 
and compel us to be students of the out-door world, whence many noble 
inspirations and humanizing teachings and devotional impulses are drawn. 
