216 
THE LADIES' FLORAL CABINET. 
natecl with life: whatever it touches is cemented with 
safety; whatever it embraces is ripened into love. The 
comforts and contentments, the privacies and refine¬ 
ments. the rests and safeguards of an American home 
can hardly be estimated. Here are the Penates and 
Lares of our worship; here is the altar of confidence; 
the bonds of our earthly faith are here, and consecrating 
it all—sending our blood in passionate flow—is the 
ecstacy that here, at least, we are beloved, our errors 
forgiven with gentlest mercy, our ideas understood 
and respected, if not accepted, our troubles and griefs 
smiled away.—in a word, that we are here entirely and 
joyfully ourselves. 
This is what the home is. All the virtues o; society 
emanate from it: it is the pivot upon which society 
turns. Without home we should be heathen nomads or 
reekless agitators. With home we are order-loving, 
prosperous, contented, refined, chaste. 
Let each one see' to it, then, that he makes the home 
what it should be. If society is worth preserving, let 
every man build a home. Let him build a home if he 
would preserve himself and sustain the institutions of 
his country, and improve each. The age of the Grove 
and the Garden is past. Our modem Socrates and 
Platos are careful to provide against the wants of the 
modern Zantippes, as they should be. To every true 
man and woman, the possession or a homo is a. glitter¬ 
ing day-dream in their youth, and when entered on the 
arena of action, it should be their first object to make 
it fairly theirs. And how easy this can be done, with 
our wealth of acres, our profundity of resources, our 
persistency as a people, and all the opportunities of the 
age. More perplexing, perhaps, it may bo in and around 
the busy city, where business bustle and confused activ¬ 
ity crowd out all the comforts of retirement and rest, 
and where the driving-wheels of trade invade the home, 
crushing out the very life of its occupants and twirling 
them into garrety recesses to die. It is a vital subject, 
however, to all. and should not be neglected. It compels 
attention, if only for the preservation of our national 
character. Physical and moral decay and death will 
be the consequence of disregarding its stern necessity. 
Greece fell because the Grove and the Academy destroyed 
the life of the home sanctuary. Rome lost the sov¬ 
ereignity of the world, because the busy forum and 
the gorgeous circus broke all domestic and social 
restraints and charms. Will it not be well for us to 
heed the lesson of their folly? C. F. Warner. 
GARDEN LORE. 
Evert child who has gardening tools, 
Should learn by heart these gardening rules: 
He who owns a gardening spade. 
Should be able to dig the depth of its blade. 
He who owns a gardening rake, 
Should know what to leave and what to take. 
He. who owns a gardening hoe, 
Must be sure how he means his strokes to go: 
But he who owns a gardening fork, 
May make it do all the other tools’ work: 
Though to shift, or to pot, or annex what you can, 
A trowel's the tool for child, woman, or man. 
’Twas the bird that sits in the Medlar tree 
Who sang these gardening saws to me. 
—Aunt Judy's Magazine. 
AN ANIMATED FLOWER GARDEN. 
Of course all the little people whose mammas 
take the Cabinet have a flower-garden of their very 
own, and doubtless take a great deal of pleasure in 
sowing their seeds, caring for the little plants and 
watching each new bud as it unfolds. What a delight 
the first blossom was ; surely mamma had nothing so 
beautiful ; but I am sure that few of you have ever 
seen or heard of such a queer flower-garden as you shall 
presently hear about, for its owner had no love for 
flowers at all, and I doubt if he ever looked at them, 
much less did anything to make them grow, but yet he 
carried the whole garden with him. A writer in the 
Youths’ Companion tells about it in this way : 
“ Alligators and crocodiles are reptiles. 
“They are not only reptiles, but ugly reptiles—very 
ugly. Ugly in looks and worse in disposition. 
“ They do not seem to know what gratitude is, and 
will kill and eat a benefactor as quickly as an enemy. 
Most other animals, no matter how fierce they may be, 
will return kindness for kindness. 
“ Here is an example of the ingratitude of the croco¬ 
dile: 
