THE OPENING DAY EOR ROSES 1S3 
Yesterday Joseph spent part of the day at Nestly 
Heights with Ben and Harry. He played tennis 
and afterwards shot at a target. At the former, 
he was rather badly beaten, because he had not 
practised nearly as much as the other boys. At the 
target-shooting, on the contrary, he won almost 
every time. Now, Joseph is the kind of a boy 
who does not like to be beaten at anything. He 
therefore came home wondering if he could not 
have a tennis- court at the Six Spruces. There is, 
he says, room enough for several ; but it is the mak- 
ing of it this year that would be a nuisance. 
Then it passed quickly through my mind that 
perhaps Joseph was beginning to lament he had not 
made a, tennis court instead of a garden. Later in 
the day my doubts were set at rest by his saying that 
he had jotted the tennis court down in his note-book 
among the things to be thought of for next year. 
“The garden,’’ he added, “is all we can possibly 
attend to now,” 
Sometimes I have thought it strange that more 
American children do not love gardening- — that is, 
enough to plant gardens and to work in them every 
day. I do not mean merely to have the little beds 
for flowers that children call their own; but real, 
vital gardens after the fashion of those cared for 
by English children. It is true that a number of 
boys and girls in Nestly have gardens, but they all 
begin and end with the sowing of a few annual 
seeds. These children have told us themselves that 
