PLOTTING AND PLANNING 63 



they are often only too ready to assume. The otlier is the 

 narrow way that leads over the erest ; and this, if followed, 

 means that the children gallantly do this work themselves. 

 Well for tliem if they decide upon this latter path, for the 

 exercise of clambering up such hills is in itself the best part 

 of a liberal education. Moreover, the ravines and precipices 

 which look so formidable to one lonely wayfarer can be con- 

 quered right merrily if the pilgrims are companioned by a 

 common cause which they have entered into with all their 

 hearts. For in the plotting of a garden all the qualities which 

 the youngsters possess in common, such as mathematical 

 accuracy, initiative, patience, and good humor, are called out 

 by the occasion and shared by all. Lucky children are they 

 who, before their fingers grow clumsy, have a chance to acquire 

 manual skill, and who, before their dispositions get cranky, 

 can practice social combinations. 



If at this crisis mathematics makes for good gardening, it 

 is just as sure that gardening makes for good mathematics. 

 For it has been found that by the time the area, with all its 

 jogs and irregularities, has been worked out, first on the land 

 itself and then on paper, the width of the paths settled, and 

 the beds outlined, not to enumerate all the details of second- 

 ai7 importance, the "art of computation" and the "science 

 of numbers " — in the language of the ancient textbooks — 

 will have lost all resemblance to a certain unpleasant specter of 

 old, and will appear in friendliest guise as a flesh-and-blood 

 reality. Experience, moreover, shows that no stimulus, how- 

 ever artfully contrived, will whip a lagging scholar at so smart 

 a gait along the road to quick and accurate figuring as a gen- 

 uine obligation to his self-elected work and to his fellows. 



The load of measuring may be lightened according to the 

 means employed. T(j begin with, gardeners are advised to 

 invest in a surveyor's tape. A garden line will be required 



