A Treatise on Domestic Economy; For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School

a farmer's boy, thus exciting them to love and cultivate fruits and flowers, awakens a new and refining source of enjoyment in minds, which have few resources more elevated than mere physical enjoyments. Our Saviour directs, in making feasts, to call, not the rich, who can recompense again, but the poor, who can make no returns. So children should be taught to dispense their little treasures, not alone to companions and friends, who will probably return similar favors; but to those who have no means of making any return. If the rich, who acquire a love for the enjoyments of taste, and have the means to gratify it, would aim to extend, among the poor, the cheap and simple enjoyment of fruits and flowers, our Country would soon literally "blossom as the rose." If the ladies of a neighborhood would unite small contributions, and send a list of flower-seeds and roots to some respectable and honest florist, who would not be likely to turn them off with trash, they could divide these among themselves, so as to secure an abundant variety, at a very small expense. A bag of flower-seeds, which can be obtained, at wholesale, for four cents, would abundantly supply a whole neighborhood; and, by the gathering of seeds, in the Autumn, could be perpetuated. Another very elevating and delightful recreation, for the young, is found in _music_. Here, the writer would protest against the common practice, in many families, of having the daughters learn to play on the piano, whether they have a taste and an ear for music, or not. A young lady, who cannot sing, and has no great fondness for music, does nothing but waste time, money, and patience, in learning to play on the piano. But all children can be taught to sing, in early childhood, if the scientific mode of teaching music, in schools, could be introduced, as it is in Prussia, Germany, and Switzerland. Then, young children could read and sing music, as easily as they can read language; and might take any tune, dividing themselves into bands, and sing off,