Omaha daily bee., 1909-04-18

JE-BoRDERED DRIVE FROM THE EAST ENTRANCE.
turned brown and died. The best hedge for eastern Nebraska,
aside from the coarse-growing Usage orange used for field fences
the Ibota privet. During a fiveyear trial this has proved very
satisfactory. 1t is perfectly hardy and stands wet feet or drouth.
We have a very fair hedge of it along the road, the hedge line COM
ing within four feet of the trunks of a line of big old soft naples
which ar about the worst to sap the ground of anything l know.
For a low hedge the Thunbergs barberry is very good and IL Is
one of the few plants which has brilliant autumn colors here. We
have also used it along the walks in the formal garden When kept
trimmed to one foot in height it makes the best substitute for box
that will grow here. The Van Houtte spirea is perfectly hardy here
as to the plant, and makes a very pretty, loose, graceful hedge hne'
but the flower buds re often destroyed by late frosts.
We have about twenty varieties of hardy perpetual roses and
find that nearly all the kinds commonly recommended by the nur-
ervm do well a s to hardness and growth of bush. The flowers
are beautiful. in the morning, but are spoiled much more quickly by
ornos of b moro tender kinds have also done veil with the
protection of a foot of strawy manure during the winter. The ram
bier types r grown everywhere very successfully, and the wild
roses come up in the meadows from seed.
ITO sum up, we al grow nearly everything here which can be
grown in Massachusetts,, the especial difference being that W e have
seems to be unfavorable to the beeches; we have a much drier eli
mate, hot winds and long, dry falls, which Ire very hard on thin
barked trees and broad-leaved evergreens unless well protected"
The gardening at Arbor Lodge was started by my mother, who
set out a number of rose bushes. peonies, etc. There were flower
beds extending along the drive from the entrance of the estat to
the house-a distance, al. told, of a quarter of a mile. She did not
indulge in any very elaborate gardening, however, the terrace gar
dens, etc, having been developed since 1902.
There are many other interesting features of the estate, though
r. FORTY acres which have been leased TO the Nebraska Cttv Country
club for a golf course. On this tract there IS a piece of the virgin
prairie, just a it stood in 1855, which has never known the pillow.
1t is just as the Indians left it, and the fact that it is probably the
only bit of land still unbroken in eastern Nebraska shows how thor
oughly the country has been given over to agriculture since the first
corn was planted.
There is, unfortunately, very little water on the place. My
father tried repeatedly to make IN artificial lake by damming the
creek in the gully south of the house. At one time he wa fairly
successful and there were boats o the lake, which he called Lake
Jopamaca, after his four sons, JOY, Paul. Mark and Carl. But the
spring freshets carried away the dam every year and after spending
thousands of dollars on it he was forced to give up the attempt.
Wy. father started the importation of blooded stock into Ne
braska, but he never did much with horses. That interest has fall
len to my brother Mark, who has gone into horse breeding extern
n ~ u oh ns p .0oc,.i a l ~ Shotn "~a'c c.tti ne a eS'I pe,a Oh r rSU Lodge
as we'll az nursnrv stOpk M hOuo II ia mot vt coIf
the income is increasing annually and the estate has been put on a
firm business basis. AT present a flock OF Shropshire sheep is busly
engaged in cleaning up the stubble and enriching the soil.
The present house is largely colonial in style and includes the
fourth house in the series. which forms the rear portion of it. The
new part was begun In the fall of 1902, soon after my fathers death,
and was finished in 1908. It's most prominent features r the
classic porticOs which show in the pictures. 1t is a fine. large house
of which we arr all very fond. Inside 1t has been furnished Iuxuri-
ously and, we think, artistcany. There are spacious rooms and
broad staircases, and the ample hrepaces consume a hundred cords
of wood a year.
My brother has collected a number OF good paintings, which are
a feature of the interior. In the library there is a unique group.
First, there is an oil painting of a buffalo and one OF an Indian, the
original owners of the land. There is a portrait of the Spanish
king who coded the land to the French. and also a portrait (Which
once hung in the French embassy in Washington Of Napoleon Bona
parte, who sold the land to the United States in 1903. Then follows
a portrait of Uncle Sam, and one of my father. whose title to the
property a conveyed by the United States fifty years later, making
a complete abstract OF title by portraits from the original owners
to the Morton family.
Another very interesting historical picture hanging in the house
is a large oil painting depicting the concluding of the Pawnee Indian
treaty, which was effected by General Denver, then Indian commits
land now occupied by Arbor Lodge, and my father was a witness
thereto. This was before the city of Denver had been named after
nv NH nv PN'uS' "hNh as pdmleu Dy Wnlam H..
Coffin of New York, portrays a complimentary war dance given by
the Indians on account of the signing Of the treaty by which they
added to the United States all the interests the Pawnee tribe had in
the lands that now comprise the states OF Nebraska, the Dakotas,
eastern Colorado, Wyoming and Montana. .,
Public life occupied my fathers time to great extent during his
later years, until about 1898. when he gave his attention to the pub
lication of a paper, The Conservative. devoted to political and eco
monte questions. This paper he conducted until his death. 1t gave
him greater pleasure than almost anything else except his trees, and
these crept occasionally into his editorial columns.
know of nothing that better illustrates my fathers private
character than an editorial which he wrote and published in The
Conservative a short time before the untimely death of my brother
Carl The fact that both the author and the two loved ones of
whom he SO tenderly wrote have passed TO the Great Beyond imparts
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