144 
WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
Let every farmer go home determined to improve on this 
condition of things. A little flower garden and a grove of 
trees is almost as contagious as the small pox. The girls in 
the next house will tease the old gentleman for a little patch 
for flowers, the next year, and the boys will find time between 
planting and hoeing to dig up and transplant a few trees, and 
a new state of things will be inaugurated. If you want to 
raise trees along the road or in the yard, plow up the ground, 
break up the sod and make it loose, and mellow, for it is just 
as essential to do this as it is to break up the ground for corn 
or wheat crops. Do this and when the eastern man comes 
along looking for a home to buy, even if your neighbor has a 
little better soil, he will buy your place in preference, and pay 
you so much more for it as to return you ten times the cost of 
beautifying it. 
Another thing, do not be so stingy and penurious as to drive 
your women out forty rods from the house to an old rickety 
pump or sweep, over a dilapidated well for water, and this too, 
when the weather is fearfully cold or hot. Do not make them 
drag wood out from under a great snow bank in winter, and 
bring it in all dripping and saturated with water, and oblige 
them to dry it by the fire before they can burn it. Employ 
help for the women in times of need, and let the girls on the 
farm see that they are something more than slaves. Do not 
drive the women to death when the threshers or harvesters are 
at your place. What is two or five dollars for hired help at 
such a time ? 
Commence improving your homes gradually. Do it a little 
at a time as you can spare the money and the time. Do not 
mortgage your farms to do this all at once, but improve every 
opportunity to plant an evergreen here, a flourishing shrub 
there, to make a flower bed here, and a flower border there ; 
to buy a picture now, and a book at another time, and without 
knowing that you have made any sacrifice in accumulating 
wealth, you will soon have pleasant homes, and your children 
will not desire to leave them for the base allurements of cities 
and towns. 
