62 GARDENS AND THEIR MEANING 



grow to-day on the spot where one grew yesterday. Feats 

 like this (for feats they truly are) stand for something greater 

 than mere individual triumphs. In so far as these dis- 

 coveries benefit the world, they are justly valued as forms 

 of high social service, and they win distinction accordingly. 



All other schemes come to a standstill while the little farm 

 is being correctly staked, the survey recorded, and a map 

 drawn to scale, giving each detail, the points of the compass 

 included. Now is the time when slow and steady wins the 

 race, for not only must the measurements be taken deliber- 

 ately, but they must be verified many times over, and" from 

 a number of different starting points. In the lexicon of the 

 young surveyor there is no such word as haste. At this stage 

 one careless slip has more than once been the undoing of a 

 beautiful plan. 



The task of surveying a home garden, even though it 

 should be divided into plots, is of course comparatively slight ; 

 but when a whole class — including the quick and the slow, 

 the lame and the lazy — undertakes to plot a school garden 

 in concert, each doing his share, surveying becomes quite a 

 different story. This is indeed exploration. 



The children set out together like a band of pilgrims. Now 

 any such company, starting on a quest, would surely expect, 

 sometime in their course, to see rising up before them the hill 

 Difficulty. Indeed, they would be honestly disappointed to find 

 the experimental life on too " dead-easy " a level. But some- 

 how they do not look for this hill at the very start-off. Never- 

 theless, — there is no disguising the fact, — it is looming up 

 already in the path of our young friends in the shape of a prob- 

 lem in plotting. To-day, as of old, there is a choice of ways. 

 One way curves conveniently around its base ; this means 

 that older persons may do all or most of the thinking, — 

 a responsibility which, out of a mistaken sense of kindness, 



