shaw I CHILDREN'S GARDENS 43 



the Pacific Ocean, and every ship has one or more cabin boys 

 aboard. What do you suppose those cabin boys do when they 

 get a toothache way out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, per- 

 haps thirty days from land? Well, usually, at least on those 

 sailing ships and freight steamers, they just have to grin and 

 bear it. Or else the captain ties a string around the tooth and 

 then sticks a hot poker in the boy's face and away he jumps and 

 out comes the tooth. 



Well, all that good old man does is to go up and down tne 

 docks looking after the cabin boys. And the first thing he says 

 to a new boy when his ship comes in is, "Well, Jack, open your 

 mouth." And that old man told me that there is not one boy 

 in a hundred that comes in on those sailing ships that he does 

 not have to< take off to the dentist to have his teeth fixed. "And 

 most of those poor kids," said Father Maloney, for the good 

 old man is an Irish priest, "Most of my poor kids," said he, 

 "have laid awake night after night, hollering in their poor dark- 

 little bunks, without a mother to comfort them, just because 

 they didn't have sense enough to use a tooth-brush every day." 



Well, have you sense enough? Or are you going to grow 

 up and have false teeth and plenty of toothaches, just because 

 you haven't sense enough to use that old tooth-brush now? 



THE PLACE OF CHILDREN'S GARDENS* 



By ELLEN EDDY SHAW 



The chief reason for Children's Gardens in the school cur- 

 riculum is perhaps physical; it is a racial instinct. It is as old 

 as civilization, for it was one of those influences whch caused 

 primitive, nomadic man to settle in one spot, because of his 

 start at soil culture. It behooves us first to train a child along 

 the easiest avenues, those of inheritance, to give him the benefit 

 of the wholesome influence of the soil and to foster the love of 

 the country and its activities. 



Children's gardening should always be, at least in the 

 spring, the key note of the nature work. Garden work is the 

 live wire of nature study. It is the chief line of nature work 

 which strikes back hard at the home, or better which forms a 

 sure link between home and school, for children's gardens 

 which are merely school gardens have lost their chief force. 

 The school end of it should be the smallest part; it is to the 

 home where the school garden interest should go. I know of 

 *Abstract of paper read at Boston meeting. 



