78 
GARDENS AND THEIR MEANING 
for scientific work. The words of Darwin, for instance, give 
every true teacher a pang : ” The school as a means of edu- 
cation to me was simply a blank.” Quite a different type of 
man has recently summed up his life in a New York school 
thus : "In fact, my life at the North Moore Street School 
was, with the exception of the playing at recesses, when I 
occasionally indulged in a fight with my pet enemy, Harry 
Dupignac, one long misery, one long imprisonment.” ^ 
Just so far as the school estranges itself from a child’s 
personal experience, just so far are both his life and his school 
impoverished. May not the school lessons and the lessons in 
the school of life unite in one great onward current ? There 
are some prophets who say that in the future these will in all 
essential respects flow on together. 
Let real things, then, in greatest abundance go on in the 
garden. Guide young people ; do not thwart them as, in the 
process of growing, they stretch out now in one direction and 
now in another. And in the meanwhile, not in order to make 
gardens but to help nurture joyous souls, let the course of 
study become so plastic that all sorts of activities may be 
worked into the beautiful substance which is life. 
1 St. Gaudens. 
