The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1922-11-20

w O4 4o.
 The chrysanethemums in the hothouse at Beardsley Park are in the heighth of their diversified glory of form, texture and color. In a few days they will be gone. The greenhouse is open a sign on the door reads. walk tn." Do so. People are doing many other things less worth whileI
 The blossoms include many tiny little pompoms, growing numer- ously on dwarf plants; some blos- soms are almost spherical, six inches or more in circumference, and stand well up in the world, eadh on a tall stalk of its own.
 
 America owes these beautiful flowers to China Some were brought to England in 179O; in 1925 so many had been developed that a show was given; since then the chrysanthemum show has been a feature of life in civilized countries The plant was early brought to this country.
 
 Notice the little blossoms and the big ones. Ask yourself if you would know, without being told that these are relatives, members of the same family? Hundreds of new varieties are created every year. No plant is more plastic in the bands of flor ists, and flower breeders.
 
 The element of plasticity in 1eres in most life. Perhaps no thing in plant or beast. has been created which man cannot change extensively and for the better.
 It would be easy to say that man can change and alter these things at his will, but the state ment would be incorrect. In the germ at the basis of each plant are a number of possibilities; a very large number; perhaps an infinite number. Man does not create any of these possibilities. By suppressing some and exa1ting others, re-arranging still others, he gets results such as are seen in the chrysanthemum house when the blossoms are compar- ed, the great with the tiny; color with color; petal with petal and form with form.
 The chrysanthemum house provides a lesson in beauty and courage. It testifies that man may make his world almost what he pIeases. A beautiful, com fortahle and easy world to live in or a hard. difficult, cold and cruel world to live in.
 
 To mould men into better de- signs it not so easy as to mould the blossom of the chrysanthe- mum, but man also is plastic. He has been in the hothouse of the world for some thousands of years and he is improving under the discipline which he inf1icts upon himself.
 The races of men are not very different from the races of the chrysanthemum. There are small and large varieties, speaking in the domain of the mind, rather than in the domain of the phys ical body. The finest specimens of mankind tower aloft solitary and splendid, as the finer speci- mems of chrysanthemums do among the smaller and humble flowers.
 The school, the church and science are the gardeners who are making man over in this gar den of the world. New help is working in the garden; enfran- chised and organized women who appreciate the plasticity of the child, the necessity that the child shall be reared in a good environ ment; women who know that the world of right is and in fact, ought to be a brotherh ood;, who preach the duties of friendliness and inter nationalism, and who demand the abolition of war, because war is a killing frost which mows down the best human blossoms.