i68 
GARDENS AND THEIR MEANING 
history classes in a Massachusetts high school ^ and a school 
near London. May not gardening supply quite as interesting 
matter for correspondence as history It may be claimed 
that writing reports and keeping diaries of garden proceed- 
ings afford enough daily practice and real material without 
letter writing. Both reports and diaries certainly call for clear 
and ready expression ; but the drawback to such exercises 
usually is that they become in matter lifeless and in form 
careless, unless they spring from a genuine reason for writ- 
ing, and for writing well. 
This is but natural. Let us analyze the situation for a mo- 
ment from the grown-up point of view. Nothing inspires 
any human being more than reading to those who want to 
hear, writing to those who want to read, and talking to those 
who want to listen. So the audience voluntarily chosen by 
any one, young or old, would bar out the class of persons 
who listen, seemingly, for the sake of pouncing upon a mis- 
take ; but it would include everybody who listens with true 
earnestness. Some of us can duplicate the experiences of a 
distinguished professional man who for years has been in the 
habit of laying his most intimate plans before an elderly 
friend of singularly lofty ideals and of a rarely sympathetic 
temperament. He attributes his success to her. Said he : 
"She makes me say better things than I ever dreamed. And 
then to be consistent I simply must follow them up in action." 
The vitality which gardening can put into the subject of 
geography cannot for a moment be doubted. Next to explor- 
ing strange lands -one’s self comes the privilege of seeing the 
world at second hand by associating distant spots with friends. 
Friends are often scattered abroad in many climes. Are not 
plants friends ? If so, bulbs carry us across to Holland or to 
Puget Sound, formal gardens to Italy, cooperative gardens 
to Denmark. 
1 Charlestown High School. 
