I cannot, however, claim to have even such knowledge of farming as these city farmers may be possessed of. My whole life, except some years of my boyhood, has been passed in towns or cities, where my work and my duties have happened to be. I have never even attempted to conduct a farm. I have, of course, indulged in that universal day-dream of the dwellers in cities or towns—the aspiration for a country home. The merchant in his counting room, the professional man at his desk, the artisan in his workshop, all indulge in this dream of a quiet, peaceful home in the country; a home embowered in trees, where the birds sing, and the breath of the morning is sweet with the perfume of flowers; where the horizon is broad, and the view over meadows, woods and fields is as restful as it is beautiful; and where the roar and clangor and fury of city life are shut out. There is something in the nature of the whole human race—in the blood from our first parents, perhaps, or that of our not far distant progenitors who wandered over the fresh earth, living in tents and pasturing their flocks—that whispers of the green fields and the quiet woods, and fills all our hearts with longing for their beauty and their repose. Very few, however, realize this dream: I have never been able to. It would be absurd for me, therefore, to talk to practical farmers about the business of their lives, or to assume to instruct them concerning the best methods of farming. You need have no fear that I will attempt to do this. But there are some things connected with farm life about which I may be able to present suggestions of interest, if not of value. First, then, it seems to me that too many Kansas farmers fail to appreciate the cash value of pleasant surroundings at home, the real worth of farm adornments, the dollars and cents that multiply in flowers and shrubbery on well-kept lawns, and especially the wealth that is accumulating in trees that are growing while they are sleeping. There is a material and pecuniary side to this question of home adornments, as well as an æsthetic side. The value of a farm—its cash value, I mean—cannot be measured entirely by the fertility of its soil, nor by the crops it produces, nor by the springs and streams that rise or flow upon it. Its market value is affected, far more than many farmers imagine, by the surroundings of its owner’s home. If these resemble the environments of a wretched hovel on the outskirts of a town; if the front door-yard is a pig-sty, and the back door-yard a cattle-pen; if the farm-house stands, bare and desolate, like a brown rock in a desert, beaten upon by sun and storms, by rain and wind, do you think the value of the farm is not impaired? To say nothing of the personal discomfort of such surroundings, do they not involve, also, a cash depreciation of the land?