REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON WINDOW GARDENING. SOi) 



from home seven hours, dinnerless, became a cruelty, and no idea 

 can gain much in a decent communit}^ while it encourages wrong. 

 Therefore this season we obtained the use of halls in different 

 sections of the city, Orienta Hall, Roxbury (loaned by the late 

 Mr. Nathaniel J. Bradlee) ; the Church of the Good Shepherd, 

 and the Industrial School on North Bennett Street, besides the 

 Society's Hall. 



A request to the School Committee of Boston that teachers 

 should be allowed to mention the work of the Window Gardening 

 Committee resulted most favorably. In the two exhibitions held 

 in Roxbury, the influence of earnest teachers was most marked. 

 The list of the Secretary of the Committee, Mr. Faxon, tells the 

 delightful story of two hundred plants brought to the Hall by the 

 children who had watched them grow, or who had gathered them 

 in the fields. 



The exhibitions in this Hall were not large, owing to the loca- 

 tion. But your Committee, realizing that in the main, the young 

 exhibitors displaj'ed courage and persistence, in bringing their 

 property — often weighty to their slender arms — offered a simple 

 lunch to the children. Attractive as this was, the expense would 

 not have justified any one in calling it a junket of the Window 

 Gardening Committee. 



To gather up a few of the results of the summer's work : — All 

 the dail}' papers and many monthly journals gave most favorable 

 notices of it. The reporters were much interested, and were 

 present on each occasion watching and noticing progress. Teach- 

 ers who did not at first listen to the proposition, later confessed 

 their ignorance and promised help in the future. Such of the 

 community as paused to see and hear, approved. The Priest and 

 Levite, who passed by on the other side, saw nothing of it. But 

 their eyes are opening ; already their words of cheer greet us. 

 Better than all this, fellow members of the Horticultural Society, 

 those who doubted and feared, have experienced a change of 

 heart ; and althougli the little plants were pinched and sometimes 

 unfit for exhibition, those gentlemen have realized that the little 

 folks, " didn't have half a chance," for the circumstances of each 

 child cannot be known to the distributor. The same most excel- 

 lent rbembers, loyal to the aims of the Society, have seen that no 

 visitor for a moment dreams that the plants were raised by a 



