COTTAGE GARDENS ASSOCIATION. 519 



has become very important that the adult masses should 

 be educated in a manner that will enable them not only to 

 see and hear, but to go one or two steps further to think, 

 understand, and judge for themselves. There have been 

 demagogues in the past, there are demagogues in the 

 present, and the number is not likely to decrease with the 

 prospect of an extended franchise. Torrents of eloquence 

 will be poured forth in the future ostensibly to awaken the 

 labourer, the artisan, and the small tradesman to his true 

 interests, but really to advance the views or interests of the 

 declaimers. Now, cottage gardening strikes me as one 

 particularly desirable mode of adult education ; it deals 

 with things rather than with words. The child who begins 

 at school with the alphabet, and passes, perhaps slowly, 

 but gradually onward, accumulates knowledge almost 

 insensibly, and during the process thinking, understanding, 

 comparing, and judging usually play a more or less 

 conspicuous part. But the man, whether young, middle- 

 aged, or old, who has not been taught to read, write, or 

 calculate, or who has but a slender acquaintance with 

 reading, writing, or arithmetic, stands in need of more 

 practical, more direct, and quicker teaching. Well, I am 

 of opinion that such teaching is best conveyed by bringing 

 him in contact with some useful art in which he has to 

 deal with objects rather than with words, and in which he 

 can take an actual working part And gardening is an art 

 of this character. Even cottage gardening demands and 

 encourages not only working, but thinking, understanding, 

 comparing, judging does not occupy the mind with the 

 present alone, but is continually carrying it backward into 

 the past and onward into the future. 



My experience does not lend support to the opinion 

 that you cannot get the working classes to think ; it may 

 have been true in the past, but it is hardly true in the 

 present. If in a given number of men who undertake to 

 cultivate plots of garden ground there is in the first instance 

 but one thinker, he and his surroundings will gradually 



