CULTURE OF FLOWERS. 
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from bud or flower, or spray of trailing vine and graceful 
foliage. 
Among the floral beauties are themes for romances, poems 
and sermons! 
Flowers awaken in us thoughts of contentment, peace, hu¬ 
mility, gratitude, gladness and love. To be among them, work 
among them and commune with them, is better than half the 
chatty gossip, indiscriminate reading, or uninstructive reverie 
in which we too often indulge or participate. Good and com¬ 
municative spirits dwell in their fairy cups, and all they impart 
is worth the treasuring! In those little flower borders, what 
inexpressible beauties are continually developing! From the 
time the soft primal leaves first pierce the mellow earth, thro' 
all the stages of growth to the ripened fruit and after decay, 
there is change, and beauty in that change. Each day the 
Unerring Hand fashions and perfects without erasure and 
retouch. 
It is no mere transient pleasure, leaving nothing behind, 
to which flowers and their culture give birth. Flower beauty, 
studied and appreciated, awakens purity and love serene and 
beautiful in the heart, humanizing, elevating and refining 
both taste and action. Where the cottage is vine-draped and 
flower-grouped without, we ever expect to find within some 
good hearts and gentle manners—some 
“Happy soul, that all the way 
To heaven, hath a summer day.” 
Flower culture is one of the happiest mediums of instruc¬ 
tion for youth. All children love natural things, if their own 
natures have been neither crushed or pampered away. On 
the contrary they abhor abstruse things, dry details which 
may be only fixed in memory by pure mental labor. But give 
them a lesson that may be conned through the tangible means 
of something external, some symbol which they can see, feel 
and appreciate. You will find hence a path to a broad land 
of brains you little guessed those tangled curls hedged about. 
It would seem that the Natural Sciences properly presented 
should be among their earliest studies. 
