SCHOOL DEPARTMENT 



Edited by ALICE HALL 'WALTER 



Address all communications relative to the work of this depart- 

 ment to the Editor, 67 Oriole Avenue, Providence, R. I. 



CHRISTMASTIDE REFLECTIONS 



Most of the harvest of the war-gardens upon which I have looked through 

 shortening autumn days is now safely under cover, but here and there a frost- 

 nipped stick or crackling stalk that has escaped the brush-heap fire of the 

 empty lot in which the gardens were made, attracts a pair of persevering Jays 

 or a flock of acquisitive English Sparrows. One lone cornstalk recalls to mind 

 the lines of the poet Lanier, to whom every swaying bough or growing blade, 

 every glow of color in sky or sea or on flashing wing, conveyed Nature's truth 

 in measures of his universal language — music. 



"l wander to the zigzag-cornered fence 

 Where sassafras, intrenched in brambles dense, 

 Contests with solid vehemence 



The march of culture, setting limb and thorn 



As pikes against the army of the corn. 



"Look, out of hne one tall corn-captain stands 

 Advanced beyond the foremost of his bands. 

 And waves his blades upon the very edge 

 And hottest thicket of the battling hedge." 



— From "Corn," by Sidney Lanier. 



On the walls of the early home of a more familiar American poet are these 

 words, written by Stephen Longfellow in 1824 to his son, Henry, who was then 

 in college: "I am happy to observe that my ambition has never been to 

 accumulate wealth for my children, but to cultivate their minds in the best 

 possible manner and to imbue them with correct moral, political and religious 

 principles, believing that a person thus educated will with proper diligence be 

 certain of attaining all the wealth which is necessary to happiness." 



To the stranger looking, as the poet so often did, out upon the narrow, 

 walled-in garden of this simply furnished home, comes back the glow of contact, 

 even through the medium of these treasured relics of his past, which such a 

 lover of nature felt as he watched the falling leaf or mused upon the misting 

 rain. Seen through the poet's eyes, how clearly is the truth revealed ! 



(436) 



