2 MV HANDKERCHIEF GARDEN. 



of Tennis Ball Lettuce seed. So it was the scrap 

 of a garden began, and thereon does hang the 

 more or less learned remarks that make this book. 

 There are people so constituted that they cannot 

 see anything remarkable in a paper of seeds. A seed 

 is potential wealth — bran new wealth that does not 

 exist, but w^aits the partnership of nature and the 

 gardener. Seeds are about the cheapest thing in the 

 world. At wholesale a cent will buy a hundred seeds 

 of lettuce. An acre of ground, if managed by a 

 man who knows his trade, will produce in one sea- 

 son 40,000 heads of lettuce. New York will calmly 

 eat every head at three cents each and cry for more. 

 You would probably pay at the store five cents a 

 head or $2,000 for the lot. 



Oh! Figures can be made to say anything. 



Think so? 



All the same, you and I and the rest of the folks do 

 pay $2,000 to somebody for that yield of lettuce many 

 times over every spring. 



It's quite true the actual grower may not get it all. 

 He seldom does and thereon might be written a 

 tale of woe that would move the world to tears had it 

 not, poor world, been listening to the gruesome story 

 for about seven thousand years. There are problems 

 in social economies so old that they have lost the 

 power of speech. This is one of them, and it was in 

 our handkerchief garden we dug up a great truth that 

 may help to solve this very problem. It was a dusty 

 old truth and smelled of the earth, yet, by decking it 

 out in a few sprigs of pungent parsley, and framing it 

 with the enticing lettuce, the persuasive pea, and the 

 inspiring cauliflower, I hope to set it forth as a dish 

 worthy the intelligent reader's grateful digestion. 



A garden is a queer place. You can dig up facts 

 and greens with the same hoe — provided you know a 



