The purpose of this book is to help make our country more beautiful. "Our country" refers especially to the United States, although in preparing the text the author has also had in mind all those parts of Canada in which climatic conditions, general appearance, and habits of thought are similar to our own, and he further acknowledges a sympathy with Thomas Paine's statement, "The world is my country." One's country includes all individual homes and the thoroughfares that make them accessible, all public grounds such as city squares, school and church yards, parks, cemeteries, railroad rights of way, golf courses, national monuments, parks and forests, all streams and lakes, all shores and all land upon which one may walk without feeling that he is trespassing.