8 GARDENS AND THEIR MEANING 



Fathers and mothers are the ones who appreciate what 

 gardens do for children. They deplore the flabby, dependent 

 attitude of young folks toward tasks, whether these have 

 been set at home or at school. To be sure, they do not ex- 

 press this in educational " lingo," but they say, " Our chil- 

 dren have no gumption," or, "They are so indifferent and 

 blase" Parents grumble at the schools, who could help it ? 

 But they finally acknowledge that school is not wholly to 

 blame, and that really the general aimlessness of boys and 

 girls is one of the inevitable evils of town life. Men and 

 women of country stock themselves, perhaps, remembering 

 the zest of their own childhood, with its wholesome duties 

 and simple pleasures, are perplexed over the folly of chain- 

 ing up a child on the one hand or letting him loose in the 

 city streets on the other. They try to remedy the difficulty 

 in various ways. The father of a handful of growing boys, 

 when this problem forced itself upon him, deliberately trans- 

 ferred his business from the city to a country town in Mas- 

 sachusetts, where he bought a small farm and raised - 

 chiefly his family. He knew he must pay in a multitude of 

 ways for this luxury; but he has got in return vigorous lads, 

 in whom there has developed conspicuously the rare stuff 

 called leadership. Again, a man occupying an important 

 public office tells us that the year before his family moved 

 into the country the doctor's bills amounted to five hundred 

 dollars. In the five years since, he has paid, all told, just 

 six dollars. 



Parents who cannot move out of the city have tried to com- 

 promise by sending their children to some out-of-town day 

 school or, at stated intervals, to some teacher of gardening in 

 the suburbs. A successful instructor 1 has taught a number 

 of such pupils. One mother has accompanied her little 



1 In Watertown, Massachusetts. 



