THE SCHOOL GARDEN. 



in the improvement gained in the school garden, express 

 themselves in the character? Surely a new race will 

 thus issue from the schools, a race which will not look 

 upon the earth as a vale of tears, but as a place worthy 

 of human industry, a beloved, habitable home, in which 

 the man of clear mind and joyous heart shall strive and 

 work for his own and his neighbor's happiness. 



Will not intellectual minds and moral qualities be 

 developed delightfully by rational school gardens ? - The 

 groundwork of all civil (and human) virtues is the com- 

 munity. Heretofore the man from the country has enjoyed 

 less of the feeling of community than the inhabitant of 

 the city, which is not wonderful, since the city is the 

 home of intellectual and moral culture. But where could 

 the germs of community be planted more securely and vig- 

 orously than in the school garden ? There is found not 

 only the common learning of the school, but common 

 work, common pleasure, and common play. By excit- 

 ing the sense of the community the school garden helps 

 essentially to solve the problem of the people's educa- 

 tion. The feeling of inter-dependence will lead to 

 common action with the neighbor, to companionships 

 and friendships for life, laying the foundations of truly 

 brotherly relations among the frequenters of the school. 

 When once the men in a community shall have more 

 pleasing and worthy recollections of their common youth 

 than the dancing floor and the parade ground not 

 rarely the only recollections they now have in common 

 when they shall think of the sisterly relations, so to 

 speak, in the school, even of its exciting emulations, 

 then a. public spirit will be kindled and take root. The 

 clear perception that the community is a great family 

 with an inseparable bond of union, does not proceed so 



