STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 47 



smilingly repeats it to himself again and again, for its ver}' music, 

 till it is his own both in sense and sound. Man\' things in education 

 which are burdensome to boys and girls in the High School are 

 mere play to a child. At four 3'ears of age the little gardener began 

 to have his own house plants, six or eight young geraniums in one 

 broad flower pot. This was his window garden. 'Olamma, here 

 are some stumps," he remarked one day. 



The word had been explained to him not long before, and he had 

 just been illustrating it. With his scissors he had felled his entire 

 geranium forest, and there remained only the bare green stumps, 

 about two inches high. His little brother soon uprooted these, and 

 the desolate flower pot was ready for a new supph' of plants. 



There was too much regret for the lost plants to allow an}" repeti- 

 tion of this experiment. The little gardener became so fond of his 

 plants that he tried to be very careful of them, and rarely broke a 

 flower pot. One da}', however, some sudden motion of his was fol- 

 lowed b}' a crash. Looking seriously down at the uprooted plant, 

 and the earthen fragments upon the floor, he said, quietl}' inverting 

 a sentence from Hawthorne, "'lam more like a physical reality than 

 a beautiful thought." But tlie accidents were so few that they are 

 not worthy of mention, compared with all the pleasure that sprang 

 from the little gardener's efforts. 



The next year he had quite a collection of house plants. He liked 

 to carry them from place to place in the yard, and sometimes across 

 the street to show to a friend. So some strong, light flower pot 

 seemed desirable. To meet this want, two or three rainy days were 

 delightfully spent bj' himself and a few friends in the stable, paint- 

 ing some tin cans and decorating them with bronze grasses. These 

 proved very satisfactory. 



One morning a lady invited the child into her hot-house, and 

 showed him more flowers than he had before seen growing together. 

 As she watered them, she remarked, "It is a great deal of work to 

 take care of these flowers." 



*'0," he replied, **I will tell you how we do it at home. We just 

 plant the seeds and water them, and God docs the rest. And they 

 grow and bloom." 



A young girl who taught a small school in a lonely place told me 

 how much her scholars enjoyed a flower-bed which she assisted them 

 to cultivate in their play hours. 



A little neighbor of mine derived great pleasure last summer from 

 a small package of mixed seeds. The furrows in which he sowed 



