The word homestead is derived from two roots, both fertile of words. Thus hatch, hedge, hold (of a ship), hat, hide and holy (set apart), all growing from the same root with home, alike carry as an essential sense the idea of shelter or defence by a method which involves seclusion. Home is that which does this for a family. Stead is from a root which is the parent of stow (to fit a thing snugly to a place), stop, stay, stand, stable, stall, settle, and stake, all conveying the idea of attachment to a place. As an active verb, it means to support, to assist. Thus Shakespeare says, “It nothing steads us.”

A homestead then is a house together with so much of the ground about as, with the house, forms a constituent part of the seclusion and abode of a family.

A homestead then is a place prepared and furnished suitably for the [983]seclusion, shelter and staying of a family. Not the mere shelter from the elements alone of a family, but all that which being of a fixed rather than a moveable character pertains to the locality of which such a shelter is the centre and supplements what it provides for the comfort of the family staying thereat.

It is not necessary that the means of maintaining the family with food and clothing, whether in a farm or shop, should be a part of the homestead. A seafaring man may have a homestead for his family. That which produces, increases or maintains the means of supporting a home is not an essential part of a homestead. The farm or garden or shop which in some cases is attached to a homestead may be laid waste and entirely removed or disconnected with it and the homestead remains unimpaired, or even be the better for it. All conveniences for mere commercial gain should therefore be considered apart from the homestead. But as supplies of various kinds—more especially of food—are essential to the maintenance of a homestead, it follows that a homestead cannot be conceived of apart from its outlets and inlets, including those belonging to others in common with it, and generally in law what is called the public road is not possessed wholly by the public; every householder or homestead holder has a special right of property in that part of it which adjoins his private land. It cannot be closed against him. It is therefore a part of his homestead.

The first question is, what is essential to be associated (in contiguity) with the shelter of a house. Vegetables and fruit can be brought in from a distance; so can flowers. These therefore may be put away till other things are secured. What is wanted that can’t be in a house? Flowers can be brought in; trees and turf cannot; open air cannot. We must have facilities for enjoying open air outside.

Most of us or of our fathers, on emigration were advanced in but a comparatively small degree, if at all, above the savage condition in this respect. See how the laboring, servile and vagabond classes of the Old World (and not one in ten thousand of us came from any other classes) live at the present day, and it will be obvious that this could be no otherwise. In the last centuries when most of our parents were brought out, the life of the great body of the people of the old countries was greatly less civilized than at present, and pioneer life is by no means favorable to direct advance in refinement, only sometimes to the formation of a strong common sense base for refinement. The true and last and only safe measure therefore of real prosperity in the United States is a measure of the willingness of the people to expend study and labor with reference to delicate distinctions in matters of form and color. The test of prosperity is advance in civilization; the test of civilization is delicacy. The test of delicacy in civilized progress, I may add, is whatever shows ability to finely see truth and to follow it in an exact way.

Therefore, it is not enough that a house affords a shelter for a family from rain and wind and sun, which bunting off of a certain class of animal discomforts is all that a savage requires of a house; nor is it enough that it [984]should be adapted to protect its inmates from many other discomforts which those who live in wigwams accept meekly, such as dirt, darkness and vermin, for instance. Nor is it enough that means for regulating the degree of temperature and of light in its different parts, advantages of neatness, conveniences for association and for retirement and other provisions against discomfort should exist in it. The slightest apprehension of discomfort from the neglect of such provisions should not be possible. The existence of such provisions, therefore, should be made obvious with scrupulous truthfulness, not with ostentation or extravagance,— that is to say, but with delicacy and refinement, which is to say, in the way of truth followed with painstaking delicacy. But then, though this is much and any appearance of design or effort of decoration without it is childish folly—in no better taste than the gewgaws hung from the nose of a filthy savage—it is not all; it is not even civilization; it is merely release from barbarism. Active, positive civilization comes with the addition of the positive pleasures which are given by a nice adaptation of the forms and lines and colors of all the parts and which are secured at no sacrifice of the finest truth, of none of the requirements of negative comfort before named, and at no extravagant cost, or sacrifice of other desirable things of any kind whatever, but which add positive beauty to these. That is to say, beauty which is good in itself and not beauty the good of which is dependent on its fitness for or expression of something else that is good, as light, air, warmth, and so on. However rich a man may be by comparison with a savage, a peasant or a slave, who is not able to desire, to pay for, and to enjoy this in his homestead, he is an utterly poor man measured by a truly civilized standard of wealth.

In all Fifth Avenue there are not a score of homes the outsides of which do not fail not merely of beauty but which do not fail even in that without which the effort at beauty is nasty, honesty of expression. Hundreds of farm houses, which have cost not so many thousands as these tens of thousands, show at least this degree of wealth, and to this degree of wealth positive beauty might be added, did their owners but care enough for it, at a cost of a tenth part of what has been wasted in barbarous decorations laid upon the brown stone skins of these metropolitan wigwams. And no patriot should flatter himself that they are better within. No, the true wealth of our country is in its homesteads. The rest is mainly rubbish, the more barbarous for the deceitful glaze which much of it has. And the field of investment in which the real wealth of the country can be most rapidly multiplied is this field of the improvement of homesteads. The way in which investment can alone be made in it is by the expenditure of sincere, patient, painstaking study, in the consideration of what is desirable, and of the means of procuring that which is desirable. There can be no question in the mind of a competent student that every dollar that is earned in the United States would be worth many times as much as it is, if our people were able to exercise their common sense in a fine way with as much ability as they do exercise it in a coarse way. Delicacy is not in great demand, nor is it much cultivated in the management of corn, tobacco, wheat [985]or cotton crops, in fatting swine, beef or mutton, in mining, in lumbering or in many other undertakings wherein we are consequently successful and make money. Thus while the average money wages of a man in such employments are much greater than in Europe, and capital is accumulated several times more rapidly, a given amount of money is commonly exchanged in Europe for, a vastly greater amount of comfort, because positive comfort, in distinction from mere brute satisfaction, is dependent mainly on the satisfaction of delicate requirements, and our means of education, extraordinary as they are up to a certain point, are so poor beyond that point that we generally blunder in a most distressing way in trying to buy a small degree of positive comfort. This is particularly the case in respect to all homestead comfort.

The climatic conditions of the site are intermediate between those of the northern, the southern, the eastern and the western parts of that region of the United States which extends from the Atlantic to the Great Plains. During the Spring and early summer there are more frequent and copious falls of rain [986]than occur throughout the region on an average and the winters are probably slightly colder than the average. Occasionally, at intervals it may be of twenty years, the mercury falls much below its lowest depression, in ordinary winters, and few trees survive that are not hardy in the greater part of the region.

The rate of yearly growth and the maximum size of most of the trees which grow naturally upon the site, does not vary greatly from the average of the same species, as they are found growing in the eastern half of the United States. The soil of the site is of less than the average fertility but perhaps, generally, of a little more than the average depth. It is mainly a clayey loam, with a porous sub-soil.

Considering the somewhat rugged topography of much of it, the site is of a similar character which, in Europe, are as a rule, thought to be more profitably devoted to forestry rather than to agriculture. There are few, if any, other places in the eastern half of the continent, in which a larger range of woody plants grow naturally. Among them, there are some that are indigenous to the southern parts of the region and not to the northern; others, which grow naturally in the northern and not in the southern parts of it.

Having regard to all these circumstances, it is considered that the site is not an unsuitable one in which to establish a collection of such trees and other woody plants as may be hoped to be successful and desirable, under the conditions above defined, for use in the eastern half of the continent.

It is proposed to plan this arboretum more particularly as a field for studying the value of extensive plantings, made with reference to the management of economic forests and the composition of scenery, and the difference is to be observed between the two objects thus set forth, and those commonly had in view in the planting of orchards, gardens, dooryards, graveyards and other places not admitting of treatment with a view to such softening and blending of forms and tints, as a result of gradations through distance.

With a view to the things thus stated, a main arboretum road is to be laid out in such a manner that the ground bordering upon it will be of considerable variety with respect to situation exposure and soil, and as far as practicable, consistently with a predominating regard for the main purpose above stated, it is to be made a pleasant route to be followed by those having no purpose of study. To this end, presentation of agreeable prospects at a distance is to be had in view, as well as the presentation of interesting objects of the immediate borders of the road. Beginning near the entrance to this road, trees and lesser woody plants are to be set agrowing on its borders, families and genera following each other mainly in the order adopted in Bentham and Hooker’s Genera Plantarum, and which is known as the natural order. But variations from this order may be occasionally made, if by such variations, plants of a particular genus or series of genera can be placed under conditions better adapted to their health and development, and to the better exhibition of their respective distinct characteristics.

It is intended to include in the arboretum specimens of every species, [987]and of such varieties as are adapted to the purpose stated, which are now in cultivation and which may be distinguished by peculiarities in growth, foliage, flowers and fruit. In general, varieties will be admitted to the arboretum road having special qualities by which the character of passages of scenery will be affected for a considerable period, and not, for example, merely for the brief flowering season. That those seeking information that will be useful in the designing of plantations for scenery, or in the planting of economic forests, may find what is required for their purposes within reasonable limits of space, varieties of plants will be excluded from the arboretum road that are chiefly interesting because of strikingly abnormal qualities not recommending them to be used, either as elements of pleasing landscape composition or with a view to commercial profit in economic forestry; also such varieties as are only distinguishable from others of the same species by peculiarities of their flowers or their fruits, and which have no other qualities that are notable because of their effect in the composition of scenery. If any such varieties were included, it would be for the purpose of illustrating distinct types in variations of this character. A special place may be provided apart from that of the main Arboretum for a collection of varieties, which, because phenomenal in these or other respects, are more interesting as curiosities than as objects of instruction, with regard to scenery or to forestry.

Not less than four specimens are to be planted near the road of each species and variety of trees to be exhibited. A part of the specimens planted will be removed before they come to crowd one another, leaving two or more of those which promise to best represent the character of the trees, and they are to be given sufficient room for the branches to spread at least on two opposite sides to the greatest distance that they would be likely to spread if wholly unimpeded. At a suitable distance behind such spreading specimen trees, others of the same species are to be planted, with a view to the exhibition of their character when grown in groups. At a suitable distance beyond these groups would be the natural forest, or the forest acres referred to hereafter, and these would be faced with trees of the kinds represented by the individual trees and groups to show their effect in combination with other trees in mass.

In order to study the habit, character, rate and economic value of the growth of trees under different conditions in a forest, it is the purpose to provide near the facilities, in which there are trees, areas of several acres extent on which there may be planted an acre each of such trees as are deemed worthy of trial either by themselves or in mixture with other trees. While it is not deemed essential that such forest acres shall be immediately adjacent to the corresponding tree in the Arboretum road, it is the intention to have them so arranged that a student will not be compelled to go much out of his way to study a tree under all the conditions in which it will be placed.

The ground above and between the trees of the Arboretum is to be generally planted with the collection of bushes, vines and creepers, and, as far as practicable, consistently with its two leading purposes, such shrubs are to be [988]displayed before and between the trees, of the same genus that they are associated in the natural order. In placing these shrubs, the purpose is to be kept in view to have them eventually illustrate the value of shrubs of each species: first, when standing singly or as specimens; second, when clustered in groups; third, when in mass, standing in open ground; fourth, when growing as underwood. Finally, as with trees so with shrubs, considerable elasticity must be allowed in all the rules, the interest of those seeking pleasure from scenery being consulted as far as may be, without putting students to serious inconvenience.

To avoid the excessive care and expense that would otherwise be necessary, it is not intended to introduce paths or to keep turf spaces open that will serve as paths, but to provide a ground cover of low shrubs or covering plants, which will not be injured if occasionally trodden upon, over which students may without inconvenience pass and come nearer to the specimens than they would be able to come if following the road. The material used for this purpose will not necessarily be of the same genus as that of the collection with which they are used.

If economy of space or the convenience of students is to be observed by it, shrubs of a particular genus may be taken out of the places which they would have if the natural order were to be strictly followed, and be sent before, among or a little in advance of the trees near which they would be placed if the natural order were strictly followed. In this respect it is to be provided simply, that when a student coming to one species of the genus, wishes to examine another species of the same genus, he may expect to find it near by. The same will be true with reference to the forest acres.

When a specially promising, young, vigorous tree or bush of any kind is found growing naturally on the Arboretum or any of its branches, it is not necessarily to be removed in order to secure an adherence to the rule of pursuing the natural order. In such a case, consideration is to be given to its value, as an element of scenery rather than as an object of instruction.