52 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 



den. For they are not good to eat, and there 

 is a law against making away with them. 

 The law is not very well enforced, it is 

 true ; for people do thin them out with con- 

 stant dosing, paregoric, and soothing-syrups, and 

 scanty clothing. But I, for one, feel that it 

 would not be right, aside from the law, to take 

 the life, even of the smallest child, for the sake 

 of a little fruit, more or less, in the garden. I 

 may be wrong ; but these are my sentiments, 

 and I am not ashamed of them. When we 

 come, as Bryant says in his " Iliad," to leave 

 the circus of this life, and join that innumerable 

 caravan which moves, it will be some satisfaction 

 to us, that we have never, in the way of garden- 

 ing, disposed of even the humblest child unneces- 

 sarily. My plan would be to put them into Sun- 

 day schools more thoroughly, and to give the 

 Sunday schools an agricultural turn ; teaching 

 the children the sacredness of neighbors' vege- . 



