Paradise is only a dream of a land of gardens. What a heritage to 

 the sons of men to know and have the ability to create a paradise upon 

 a small plot of soil! It should be the natural heritage of every child to 

 have the knowledge of gardening, and this knowledge should come early 

 in life while the child is hungry for this natural existence. 



Wouldn't you rather see your child out in a garden in lhe__ early 

 sunlight among crisp growing vegetables and beautiful flowers than 

 confined to a crowded, dusty schoolroom poring over dead languages? 

 If every child was brought up in a garden and given the training that 

 would enable him to know how to produce the choicest vegetables and 

 berries and fruits and flowers, the joy of this natural, healthful exist- 

 ence would be so instilled that few would ever leave this abundant 

 existence for the hard pavements and bare walls of cities. It matters 

 not what vocations are chosen in after life, the boy that has the heritage 

 of knowledge of how to grow his own living from the soil will never 

 know famine in the hardest times. He will be fortified against any 

 calamity. He will have an alternative in any walk of life. Strikes, or 

 high cost of living, or old age, will have no terrors to the man who can 

 go back to first principles and create a living from a small plot of land. 



And to think that there is enough good rich land in the world 

 so that every son and daughter can have this little self-created paradise 

 is a thought that is full of hope and has in it the healing of the torn and 

 wounded nations. The boy that grows up in a garden, with the 

 fragrance of flowers and the song of birds, has no understanding of 

 grim, ghastly war. He cannot understand why nations should fight 

 over boundary lines to the destruction of the individual. 



"Westward the course of empire takes her way." Ancient Babylon 

 arose a mighty nation, reached her zenith and fell. She rose to her 

 mighty strength from her agriculture and well-tilled fields. Her 

 gardens were irrigated in that early date. Today, her fallen gardens 

 lie buried in ruins. Athens takes her place on the stage of time, plays 

 her part before the world with its sculpture and architecture and 

 philosophy, and the curtain is lowered and posterity retains only frag- 

 ments of the beauty that was then created. While the philosophers of 

 Athens were still pacing the corridors of her Capitol expounding 

 truths, there appeared on the western horizon a new city that was 

 destined to rule the world. Rome rose to a world power, then forgot 

 her productive fields and squandered her strength on soldiers and high 

 living and fell. Then the stream of humanity grew into a mighty river 

 that flowed over into France and Germany and England, and all the 

 European nations grew and waxed strong. Ever and anon there was 

 "war and rumors of war" as these growing nations began to covet more 

 power. England terms herself mistress of the seas, and Germany goes 

 to seed on militarism. It is the old story as old as history, the Rise 

 and Fall of Nations. Today, dynasties are crumbling and democracy 

 may have its birth in this fiery ordeal. The river of humanity of all 

 nations has continued to flow toward the west until the two Americas 

 are filled with people. Only yesterday our forefathers landed upon 

 Plymouth Rock, then our grandfathers headed their teams toward the 

 Middle West, traveling in covered wagons, and our fathers can remem- 

 ber when Indiana was a frontier forest. On and on across the Missis- 

 sippi and up the slope of the Rockies moved this human stream, and 



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