of a property. I do not know that any
one has worked out full plans for the combining of fruit-trees, nuts,
and berry-bearing plants into good treatments, but it is much to be
desired that this shall be done. Any of you can picture a sweep of
countryside planted to these things that would be not only novel and
striking, but at the same time conformable to the best traditions of
artistic rendering.
I think it should be a fundamental purpose in our educational plans to
acquaint the people with the common resources of the region, and
particularly with those materials on which we subsist. If this is
accepted, then we cannot deprive our parks, highways, and school grounds
of the trees that bear the staple fruits. It is worth while to have an
intellectual interest in a fruit-tree. I know a fruit-grower who secures
many prizes for his apples and his pears; when he secures a blue ribbon,
he ties it on the tree that bore the fruit.
The admiration of a good domestic animal is much to be desired. It
develops a most responsible attitude in the man or the woman. I have
observed a peculiar charm in the breeders of these wonderful animals, a
certain poise and masterfulness and breadth of sympathy. To admire a
good horse and to know just why he admires him is a great resource to
any man, as also to feel the responsibility for the care and health of
any flock or herd. Fowls, pigs, sheep on their pastures, cows, mules,
all perfect of their kind, all sensitive, all of them marvellous in
their forms and powers,--verily these are good to know.
If the raw materials grow out of the holy earth, then a man should have
pride in producing them, and also in handling them. As a man thinketh of
his materials, so doth he profit in the use of them. He builds them into
himself. There is a wide-spread feeling that in some way these materials
reflect themselves in a man's bearing. One type of man grows out of the
handling of rocks, another out of the handling of fishes, another out of
the growing of the products from the good earth. All irreverence in the
handling of these materials that come out of the earth's bounty, and all
waste and poor workmanship, make for a low spiritual expression.
The farmer specially should be proud of his materials, he is so close to
the sources and so hard against the backgrounds. Moreover, he cannot
conceal his materials. He cannot lock up his farm or disguise his crops.
He lives on his farm, and visibly with his pro
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