178 GARDENS AND THEIR MEANING 



for scientific work. The words of Darwin, for instance, give 

 every true teacher a pang : " The school as a means of edu- 

 cation to me was simply a blank." Quite a different type of 

 man has recently summed up his life in a New York school 

 thus : " In fact, my life at the North Moore Street School 

 was, with the exception of the playing at recesses, when I 

 occasionally indulged in a fight with my pet enemy, Harry 

 Dupignac, one long misery, one long imprisonment." x 



Just so far as the school estranges itself from a child's 

 personal experience, just so far are both his life and his school 

 impoverished. May not the school lessons and the lessons in 

 the school of life unite in one great onward current ? There 

 are some prophets who say that in the future these will in all 

 essential respects flow on together. 



Let real things, then, in greatest abundance go on in the 

 garden. Guide young people ; do not thwart them as, in the 

 process of growing, they stretch out now in one direction and 

 now in another. And in the meanwhile, not in order to make 

 gardens but to help nurture joyous souls, let the course of 

 study become so plastic that all sorts of activities may be 

 worked into the beautiful substance which is life. 



1 St. Gaudens. 



