82 .MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



and animal world afford many opportunities for the intelligent and 

 sympathetic teacher to influence the child profoimdly. 



Moral instruction need not be a dismal matter. All the preach- 

 ments in the world cannot illuminate the sul)ject of regard for the 

 rights of others as does one half-hour's Avork in a school garden. 

 Correct habits of Avork can be taught in any garden. "They can 

 fool you in the school room," said one of the Boston masters to me, 

 as we watched the children at work, "but out here in the garden 

 we can see whether they know or not." 



All these things can be taught with like profit in any school garden. 

 In some other respects the methods employed may be adapted to 

 various ends. The country school garden might serve as a model 

 for the community. No one familiar with our country towns in 

 New England will deny that such a garden attached to the country 

 school might be of inestimable service in calling attention to new 

 ways of doing things, new ]ilants, new varieties, new ideas. This, 

 I am told, is the purpose of some of the school work in Tennessee, 

 where one of the county school superintendents is striving to base 

 the school work on agriculture, which is the prevailing industry 

 of the community. Also, it conforms to the theory on which Hamp- 

 ton and Tuskegee Institutes have been so successfully conducted. 



Then, in the village school we can see opportunities for making 

 the garden of economic and aesthetic value. INIuch of the work of 

 the village improvement societies has centered about the village 

 school. Its grounds have been planted, its schoolrooms adorned. 

 Why should the school not offer a place for learning how best to 

 plant a small garden; how to obtain a succession of blossoming 

 floAvers; how colors should l)e arranged; hoAv to ])lant ugly spots 

 with vines and shrubs. 



Then the factory town. Here we find ourselves confronted with 

 the great modern industrial problem which underlies all our efforts 

 to make this a better and more lovely world to live in. I shall 

 never forget the effect produced upon me by the sight of the little 

 gardens in Fall River at the time of the strike in the cotton mills 

 two years ago. The Portuguese operatives retain their love of the 

 cultivation of the soil in spite of their factory life, and they have 

 a habit of clubbing together and hiring a tract of land on which they 

 grow garden truck. At the time of my visit, in mid-summer, these 



