PLOTTING AND PLANNING 
that one, even if suggested by a graybeard, is intrinsically 
better than another ? although better it certainly proves for 
the education of the young person whose heart is in it. 
In the course of all this plan making and unmaking, it is 
inevitable that some false gods be shattered. City children, for 
example, ‘accustomed all their lives to banked-up flower beds 
in public parks and gardens, seem possessed to perpetuate 
these in their own gardening. They are not even content 
with following their model with reasonable zeal, but in the 
process of path making they will be seen carefully scooping 
the earth out deeper and deeper, enhancing, as they firmly be- 
lieve, this beautiful effect, which finally becomes grotesque, if 
not actually gruesome in character. In a park, of course, this 
special treatment of banking the earth is often given to bulbs 
and to plants that have been nursed in hothouses and then 
transplanted on the eve of blossoming for a few weeks’ dis- 
play. But in genuine, everyday gardening there is nothing 
to be said in favor of such mounds. Pause a moment and you 
will see that in such cases the water is drained off to a lower 
level so quickly that the roots are sure to starve. 
So far we have been discussing the matters of general con- 
cern ; the time has now come to talk over the various spe- 
cialties. These, too, concern everybody, but not all to the same 
degree. The wide difference in children’s personality is now 
brought into high relief. Students of a certain type, for in- 
stance, are so constituted that they will quite contentedly carry 
on a garden plot which is the exact counterpart of their neigh- 
bor’s. Perhaps they may as well be allowed to form this habit. 
By some teachers no special obligation to such natures is 
recognized, beyond letting them jog comfortably along the 
great highways that others have trodden smooth, keeping 
constantly at their heels, however, to see to it that no actually 
assigned task is neglected. It seems often to be taken for 
