WHAT MAKES A SCHOOL GARDEN WORTH WHILE 25 
to new and unexpected conditions. These are the earliest 
signs of leadership. 
By what has already been said, the art of the teacher is 
seen to be distinctly constructive. Just here he will study to 
give as naturally as possible, not merely to a select few but to 
each young human being, such opportunities as are needed to 
develop him out of a state of self-centered dependence into one 
of freedom and fullest usefulness. To see that this happens 
requires no small amount of insight and discretion. Some 
pupils will need to be shaken out of their self-importance. A 
"bossy” child, for instance, is usually disciplined by his co- 
workers. Others, on the contrary, will be found lacking in 
initiative and limp except while spurred by the persistent 
vigilance of an older person and stimulated by the hope of 
conventional reward. 
Garden work will, perhaps, in this way offer the golden 
moment in which to break the fetters of an artificial school 
life, for a true education garden can be managed so that the 
child faces the conditions of the real world. A stern, uncom- 
promising world to wrestle with it is indeed, but by good luck 
he may face it with the supreme advantage of a clear-sighted, 
yes, and devoted, friend by his side — the teacher — and 
with an organized brotherhood of fellow workers, who will 
make his success or his failure theirs. 
Let us consider for a moment a few of the special uses in 
life to which the power of initiative can be put, and how it 
can be further exercised in a garden. One thing is plain : if 
any of us could rely upon traveling " personally conducted ” 
through life, the power to blaze new trails would be unneces- 
sary. But each day’s problem comes to every individual man 
afresh, however humdrum or circumscribed his life. Some- 
times it is the old one with new variations, and sometimes 
it is a brand-new one. Is there any recipe for attacking a 
