WE, as a nation, are not a happy, home-loving people. The “spirit of unrest” pervades all classes.
This enterprising, uneasy spirit, has been, and is, of benefit to us as a comparatively new country, in settling and breaking our wild Western lands.
But the time has come, when it is well to curb that spirit, and cultivate all quiet, home-loving influences.
Therefore, I beseech you, parents, to begin in earliest infancy, to cultivate a love of the beautiful in nature, give your little ones flowers; and as soon as they are able to play in the garden, give them a little spot of their own to dig in; and when they can understand the process, give them seeds to plant, and some few flowers to cultivate. I can tell you of a happy cottage home, where the children, from earliest infancy, have lived among flowers. Each had their tiny garden, with spade, hoe, trowel and watering-pot. The father and mother would also assist with their own hands in training vines, roses and shrubs, in artistic beauty. The good father never went to his counting-room without some flowers in his hand, or in the button-hole of his coat, the valued gift from the tiny garden of one of his darlings. Years passed and fortune favored them, but they never would exchange their cottage home, with its vines, trees and shrubs, for all the stately mansions in the town. And as the daughters married, and the sons left to seek their fortunes, they would look back with intense longing to their loved home; and joyous were their meetings around the home Christmas tree.
On Sundays they always, even in midwinter, ornamented their social table with flowers, for they are God’s smiles. Therefore, my friends, I speak from observation, and from seeing the effect of an opposite course. If you wish to lessen your doctor’s bill, and give the beauty of robust health and happiness to your children, girls or boys, give them a garden and let them plant, weed and water it. If your children bring you even a simple field daisy, express your pleasure to them, and let them not see you cast it aside.
Teach your boys the use of a pruning-knife, and how to graft; then give them some trees to experiment upon. You may save them from dissipation, by giving them a taste for Horticulture. It is a happy, health-giving employment.
Decorate even your barn with graceful vines. The poorest house can be made an agreeable place, by transplanting a few of the many simple, wild vines. It is not natural to love intensely a stiff, ungainly object.
I have often thought, as I have roamed about the farming districts of New England, and have seen the many great, stiff, square houses, with not a graceful tree, or flower to relieve their nakedness, (though now and then a syringa, or lilac bush, or cinnamon rose, and perhaps a stately old butternut, may be seen,) the sons and daughters of those households will surely emigrate. Utility is our hobby. Some farmers think it waste time to plant a flower, as it yields no fruit.
Remember the old saying, “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” You that dwell in a city, strive to have a small spot in the country to which you may send your children in Summer, to roam at will. I heard a little child, in urging her mother to go into the country in vain, cry out, “It is too, too bad, mamma, I know God did not make the city for little children, because he loves us.”