WHAT MAKES A SCHOOL GARDEN WORTH WHILE 21 
In some schools only one class each year is given the privi- 
lege of gardening ; and in these cases it is generally the 
middle or high grades in a grammar school that are chosen. 
Yet the other classes often participate, in a measure, though 
they have no plot to work in. Here the younger children 
watch every event that affects the garden’s prosperity, and 
regard it with quite a tremendous sense of its importance, as 
well as the importance 
of the superior beings 
at work there, whom 
they admire far more 
than they do their teach- 
ers. They hang over 
the fence, casting wist- 
ful glances and making 
sage comments. By the 
talk to and fro it is plain 
that they are looking for- 
ward with ill-concealed 
impatience to the year 
after next, it may be, 
when, by the rights of 
succession, this honor will fall to 'them. Once in a while — 
happy mortals — they may be invited in to help check a raid 
of potato beetles or to push a wheelbarrow. 
On the other hand, the scholars who have passed into 
higher classes or out of the school altogether show in the 
schemes an elder-brother interest, strongly tinctured, it is true, 
with chaff and advice. But this does not seem to give offense, 
particularly if it is accompanied, as is the rule, by a willing 
hand at some critical moment. Many children prove the 
worth of their school course by undertaking more specialized 
or more ambitious work in their own back yards, and by 
