Let Every Man own his Garden. 151 



bank for the investment of minute fragments of time. The owner hurries 

 home from his work to some little job in his garden, when he would other- 

 wise lounge on the way, or stop to take a drink or a smoke. A little work 

 done at dusk may make a great show twenty years later ; and a disturbed 

 mind, perhaps, was calmed in the performance of it. Years ago, perhaps, 

 his wife left the drudgery within, to breathe a little air, and plant the rose 

 that now covers her porch. The tenant's wife may at the same hour have 

 exchanged a little scandal with a neighbor, which has long since ripened 

 into a law-suit destined to fill two families with bitterness for a whole 

 generation. 



One minute per day spent in a garden for twenty years, amounts, with 

 compound interest, to nearly a month's work. A huge willow cost only 

 one-half minute a quarter century since. A magnificent chestnut repre- 

 sents an hour's work of a son long since dead. That row of pear-trees 

 stands there because two boys decided to forego the privilege of going to 

 a militia-muster. And at every moment, for months together, your garden 

 is asking something at j'our hand ; and it saves what you give it, and at 

 the same time soothes you, and improves your health. 



We rise to higher ground ; and your thoughts have already run before our 

 words. The garden is an almost necessary aid in training your children. 

 A child who never learns any manual occupation besides play can have no 

 solidity of character. Again : your beloved must be a house child, a garden 

 child, or a street child. Unhappy the youth that must choose between the 

 house and the street ! The girl is confined to the house, to the detriment 

 of her health ; the boy takes to the street, to the still greater injury of his 

 morals. Happy the son or daughter in whom is developed a passion for 

 gardening ! An able commentary on the Holy Scriptures may never do so 

 much good as Miss Warner's "Three Little Spades." But, if you do not 

 own the garden, your labor is like water put in a sieve. The garden 

 abhors the tenant, and the tenant's child hates gardening. 



We close with one more consideration. The child becomes an adult, 

 and must leave the home of his birth. How does it live in his recollection ? 

 If his parents owned their home, and it was their life-study to make it a 

 happy one, affection wanders over every room and through every closet. 

 There stands the bed on which my sister died. This is the door which 



