4 
CHILDREN'S GARDENS 
i 
or the cruel frost nips a delicate treasure, com¬ 
pensation soon follows—the seeds come up 
exceptionally well, the pansies are finer and 
larger than you anticipated, or, in some way 
or another, your grief is forgotten in a new 
delight. The garden is full of surprises, some¬ 
thing unexpected often happens, a primrose 
more brave than its fellows opens a pretty 
bright flower on some cold and dismal autumn 
O 
day, or a precocious snowdrop pokes through 
the frosty ground and shakes its little white 
head as a harbinger of spring. 
Another and perhaps the chiefest attraction 
of a garden is that occupation can always be 
found there. No idle people are happy, but 
with mind and fingers busy cares are soonest 
forgotten. There is not a day in the year, 
however hard the toil may have been, but 
that some employment can be found. “Satan 
finds some mischief still for idle hands to do,” 
but will not trouble hands actively at work in a 
garden, for, as Bacon, the statesman and writer, 
said nearly three hundred years ago, it is “ the 
purest of all human pleasures.” 
There is much good to be learnt in our 
gardens. The book of Nature, and the world 
of wonders she unfolds, are open to all who 
seek. Every seed that falls into the ground 
and dies and then springs forth into some 
