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some corner to flowers that will be "free to all," where the little people can go 

 and touch this one and that one, talk about them, and pluck them if they like, 

 without the paternal accompaniment, "No, no; musn't touch!'' 



When in Detroit last season, and calling upon Prof. Tracy, whose name is 

 familiar to every horticulturist in Michigan, the children took me into the rear 

 vard and showed me their flower-garden. Each one had a spot of ground upon 

 which flower seeds had been sown, and the plants tended by each little pair of 

 hands. There was individuality in each separate plat, and even if there was 

 not much art about the planting, pleasure in ownership and a development of 

 a love for beautiful colors and forms was of more value to the little ones than 

 the most elaborate parterre would have been in the front lawn, if accompanied 

 by the unsympathetic, " Don't touch it!" — S. Q. Lent. 



Children in the Garden. — Mrs. Nellie S. Kedzie, teacher of household 

 economy and hygiene in the Kansas Agricultural College, talks thus sensibly 

 about the lessons for children in the home garden : The influence of the 

 thrifty farmer's life on the children who come to take part in the study, and 

 afterwards in the work, of the world is very different from that of the life 

 where the little things are allowed to drift along as they will ; where the 

 pretty is left out. and where little care is felt for anything but the actual 

 hard work. The little children in a home will take the liveliest interest in 

 the gardens, and if allowed a plot of ground aud a few seeds, "all their 

 own," they will spend hours in the happiest kind of work, neglecting play, 

 and really working hard in anticipation of the beauty that will come bye and 

 bye. They will learn to observe closely, too, and many will learn things 

 which, though trifles in themselves, will help very much in the long years of 

 learning. We all know of the boy who, when his beans began to grow, 

 pulled them all up and planted them again, top side down, " 'cause the seed 

 must be in the ground; " he won't have to be told in botany that seeds ger- 

 minate ; he has learned it by sad experience. The little four-year-old who 

 helped shell peanuts for planting, and then asked how long it would take 

 those nuts to " get shells on 'em,'' learned as much in the explanation which 

 followed as the wisest can know of the mystery which gives new life from 

 the death of the old. All these things that go toward helping people grow 

 wiser make the world grow stronger and better. Many a child away from 

 home looks back to mother's flower beds with a pleasant thought of the 

 little things learned there. Many a boy remembers the task finished when 

 he weeded the onion beds, and resisted the desire to pull plants with weeds 

 as one overcoming of evil. And from the flower beds and gardens of many 

 homes traces may be felt of little helps that in the end may become large 

 factors in the lives of men and women ; for it is always the little things that 

 make the whole. 



Hunting Spring Flowers. — The secretary of the Michigan Horticultural 

 Society is responsible for the following outburst of sentiment: 



Only a few days now and we who have eyes for such things will find peep- 

 ing out from the sunny side of the fence, an old brush heap or stump, the 

 first flowers of spring. How delicately beautiful they are after the long, 

 cold winter, and how wonderful that so soon after the first spring rains they 

 push so rapidly into the air and light. But all last summer they were pre- 

 paring quietly to surprise us this spring. It was no suddenly formed pur- 



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