168 GARDENS AND THEIR MEANING 



history classes in a Massachusetts high school 1 and a school 

 near London. May not gardening supply quite as interesting 

 matter for correspondence as history ? It may be claimed 

 that writing reports and keeping diaries of garden proceed- 

 ings afford enough daily practice and real material without 

 letter writing. Both reports and diaries certainly call for clear 

 and ready expression ; but the drawback to such exercises 

 usually is that they become in matter lifeless and in form 

 careless, unless they spring from a genuine reason for writ- 

 ing, and for writing well. 



This is but natural. Let us analyze the situation fora mo- 

 ment from the grown-up point of view. Nothing inspires 

 any human being more than reading to those who want to 

 hear, writing to those who want to read, and talking to those 

 who want to listen. So the audience voluntarily chosen by 

 any one, young or old, would bar out the class of persons 

 who listen, seemingly, for the sake of pouncing upon a mis- 

 take ; but. it would include everybody who listens with true 

 earnestness. Some of us can duplicate the experiences of a 

 distinguished professional man who for years has been in the 

 habit of laying his most intimate plans before an elderly 

 friend of singularly lofty ideals and of a rarely sympathetic 

 temperament. He attributes his success to her. Said. he: 

 "She makes me say better things than I ever dreamed. And 

 then to be consistent I simply must follow them up in action." 



The vitality which gardening can put into the subject of 

 geography cannot for a moment be doubted. Next to explor- 

 ing strange lands one's self comes the privilege of seeing the 

 world at second hand by associating distant spots with friends. 

 Friends are often scattered abroad in many climes. Are not 

 plants friends ? If so, bulbs carry us across to Holland or to 

 Puget Sound, formal gardens to Italy, cooperative gardens 

 to Denmark. 



1 Charlestown High School. 



