42 
THE WAR GARDEN VICTORIOUS 
meals, with the privilege, however, of purchasing supplies 
from the hotel at favorable rates. Two at a time they 
kept house, while the other six looked after the gardens. 
None of these girls had had any previous experience 
worth mentioning in the cultivation of the soil. Yet 
they made very rapid progress in the art of gardening. 
Their success was un- 
doubtedly due to the fact 
that they stuck to a few 
staple crops and did not 
attempt too diversified 
gardening. They raised 
peas, lettuce, radishes, 
carrots, beans, and other 
common vegetables. Upon 
beginning their work they 
received instructions from 
the hotel farmer, Henry Bemis, who looks after some 
of the larger tracts of land owned by the hotel manage- 
ment, which are given over almost exclusively to the 
raising of hay for the dairies. Such instruction was 
not long necessary, however, as the young women 
farmers speedily acquired considerable skill. 
Even gardening and haying did not occupy all their 
time. One rainy day, when no gardening could be done 
they went to a neighboring farm where there were 
several thousand bushels of potatoes which had begun 
to sprout. The visitors started “sprouting” with a 
will and at the end of the day had averaged twenty- 
five bushels each. They were told that ten bushels had 
