WHAT MAKES A SCHOOL GARDEN WORTH WHILE 21 



In some schools only one class each year is given the privi- 

 lege of gardening ; and in these cases it is generally the 

 middle or high grades in a grammar school that are chosen. 

 Yet the other classes often participate, in a measure, though 

 they have no plot to work in. Here the younger children 

 watch every event that affects the garden's prosperity, and 

 regard it with quite a tremendous sense of its importance, as 

 well as the importance 

 of the superior beings 

 at work there, whom 

 they admire far more 

 than they do their teach- 

 ers. They hang over 

 the fence, casting wist- 

 ful glances and making 

 sage comments. By the 

 talk to and fro it is plain 

 that they are looking for- 

 ward with ill-concealed 

 impatience to the year 

 after next, it may be, 

 when, by the rights of 

 succession, this honor will fall to them. Once in a while — 

 happy mortals — they may be invited in to help check a raid 

 of potato beetles or to push a wheelbarrow. 



On the other hand, the scholars who have passed into 

 higher classes or out of the school altogether show in the 

 schemes an elder-brother interest, strongly tinctured, it is true, 

 with chaff and advice. But this does not seem to give offense, 

 particularly if it is accompanied, as is the rule, by a willing 

 hand at some critical moment. Many children prove the 

 worth of their school course by undertaking more specialized 

 or more ambitious work in their own back yards, and by 



WATCHING BROTHER WORK 



