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“Calliope Marsh” Catches a Vision from Nature 
Written expressly for “School Gardens’* by Miss Zona Gale, 
Author of “Friendship Village” Series 
“That Spring afternoon,” said Calliope Marsh, “I felt like I just 
couldn’t go to the quarterly meeting of the Friendship Village Married 
Ladies Cemetery Improvement Sodality. The world was too beautiful. 
So I headed for the top of Hornet Hill, where I-knew Spring would be. 
“As I come up the path toward the top of the hill, I heard voices. 
And I was sorry for that, because I didn’t feel like talking with people. 
I felt like just looking, and keeping still. So before I got to the top of 
the hill, I stopped. And I turned around to get the view from there, 
and I come face to face with the whole universe—or as much of it as most 
anybody can take in at any one time—hills and fields the color of a green 
marble I used to have, roads and sand-bars all rich browns, like carnelians 
and moss agates; and all the sky bright summer blue. 
“Just then something rustled back of me. And there was Binnie 
Mince, busy with a basket and a spoon, and not paying any attention to 
anybody. It was Saturday, so he wasn’t in school—or rather, he was in 
the Big Outdoors School that day, instead of in a building. 
“ ‘O Binnie,’ I says to him, You tell me: What’s the sky as blue as?” 
“ ‘As my crayon that’s most used off of,’ says he, instantly. 
“ ‘That’s it,’ says I, and I added—because I coudn’t help it: “Binnie, 
don’t God do his work good ?” 
“ ‘Course / says Binnie Mince, and went on digging with his spoon. 
And I see he was taking up violet and buttercup plants that hadn’t blos¬ 
somed yet, and putting them careful in his basket. 
“ ‘What you going to do with them ?’ I ask’ him. 
“ ‘Make me my garden,’ he says, digging away. 
“Do you get any idea of how nice it was out there in the bright 
weather, with that little boy digging away on his violet plants ? It was the 
kind of a day like when you were twelve years old, and got your hat and 
rushed out right after early breakfast, to shake hands with the Whole 
Forenoon. I like to think about it. 
“ ‘Oh,’ I says, everything is so beautiful—so beautiful. 
In just that minute I looked down and saw Friendship Village, where 
we lived, sitting down there at the foot of Hornet Hill like somebody 
come to stay. There it was—little ^fat brown buildings like toads, and 
streets that looked like something rough-dried at the laundry and not 
washed out very good; dirt piles where there’d ought to have been a park 
and dump holes where there’d ought to have been a play-ground, and 
nothing at all round the Court House yard where there’d ought to have 
been trees. 
“ ‘Why, Binnie, I says, ‘what a homely town we live in!’ 
“He went on digging. ‘Course,’ he says again. ‘It’s nothing but a 
little country town—my mama says so.’ 
“Nothing but a little country town! I kind of thought the words 
through twice, like you do, sometimes. Why, when we say ‘country ’ we 
mean something beautiful. But when we say ‘country tozvn’ zve always 
mean something ugly. 
“I turned round to say this to him, and then I saw something else. 
The voices that I’d heard and kept hearing had been coming nearer. And 
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