Sinniijcr Meeting. 141 



Mas afraid to say much about it. He did not want to tell any one that 

 he was going to have a window garden in the school room. He had his 

 room just as pretty as could be. Fixed up the old laboratory as nice as 

 he could with flowers and plants. Swept up things nice and clean. Had 

 <,verything as pretty as it could be. \\1iile he was doing all this work, 

 the children were very anxious to know what he was doing, so they 

 would peep in under his arm and were awful curious to know what was 

 ^oing on. In a few weeks they w^anted to know all about it. Finally he 

 told them what he was doing. Pretty soon they wanted to do something 

 in this work, too. He told them, yes, they might get some boxes and fix 

 them if they wanted to. As a result he said one day, well next ^londay 

 ii- a holiday, how many of you would like to take that day and fix up a 

 nice little school garden. They were all in for it. They put up some 

 good benches on the west side of the room. They then went to the 

 woods, in February, and scraped the dry leaves and sticks all ofif and got 

 all kinds of things. They began to sort them out. One part of the stand 

 for this curious thing and another part for another curiosity. He said 

 for them to watch these things. They had a collection of onion-like 

 bulbs. He had them to set them. After a few weeks they had a very 

 pretty garden there. The onion-like bulbs became the pretty little spring 

 beauties that we all know. They had the Columbine and Lillies and all 

 sorts of things. These children had never seen anything like this be- 

 fore. When the seeds began to germinate they watched them and thev 

 began to try to find out all about how the plants started. When they 

 had done all this, he began to teach them about outdoor gardening, too. 

 The little fellows began to be interested and wanted to plant tomato 

 plants. Xow this is just what he wanted them to do. So they took 

 their February bench and put sand and good soil on it and soon had 

 little plants to take out to their beds. He gave little prizes for the best 

 kept flower beds and the best kept garden beds. All this work did not 

 require a single lesson to be learned. He did not ask them to do tliis but 

 just let them do it themselves. And they lost no time at all from their 

 lessons. The influence did not stop there. Eveybody came there to eat 

 their lunch. The other teachers saw this and began to think whether they 

 'Couldn't get something like this to interest their pupils, too. That caused 

 them all to take it up. 



Now the next year, we had 15 in the course and the next year 25, 

 and last year, we had /^. Last Monday when I left, we had a large 

 number and- they w^ere still enrolling. That was one reason I was not 

 with you at first of the meeting. I felt that I could not leave them. I 

 ■don't see why this work shouldn't be taken up in our country schools, 

 too, as w.ell as anywhere else. Why should not a better knowledge of 



