COTTAGE GARDENS 



That is all. WTien we have given two or 

 three lesser items our story is told — for what it 

 is worth. It is well to say we began small; in 

 our first season, fifteen years ago, our whole roll 

 of competitors numbered but sixty. It is the 

 visiting that makes the difference; last season 

 these \'isits, volunteer and official, were more 

 than thirty-one hundred. 



Another source of our success we believe to be 

 the fact that our prizes are many and the leading 

 ones large — fifteen, twelve, nine dollars, and so 

 on down. Prizes and all, the whole movement 

 costs a yearly cash outlay of less than three hun- 

 dred dollars; without the People's Institute at 

 its back it could still be done for five hundred. 



And now, this being told in the hope that it 

 may incite others, and especially youth, to make 

 experiments hke it elsewhere, to what impulse 

 shall we appeal ? 



Will it not suffice if we invoke that adolescent 

 instinct which moves us to merge our individual 

 hfe — to consolidate it, as the stock-manipulators 

 say — in the world's one great life, our "celes- 

 tial selfishness" being intuitively assured that 



U3 



