CHILDHOOD IN THE GARDEN 
rosy of cheek, with eyes as clear as a woodland pool. 
Wise in nature’s ways, serene and merry, no nervous, 
prematurely school-aged children, these. Possibly they 
are a bit behind in the usual smattering of class-room 
courses, but they are likely to have more than a passing 
acquaintance with the actual habits of the grand old 
mother, her birds and insects and plants, her lovely ap¬ 
peals and eternal interests. 
Make your earliest school-room the garden and you 
are not likely to regret it. You won’t have to worry 
over your boy or girl’s anemia, or be troubled with 
nerves out of kilter, or with the results of overstudy 
and under-development. And if any child in the world 
needs a garden to grow up in, it is the American child, 
with its alert, sensitive mind, its too-tense ambition and 
love of competition, its unconscious assimilation of the 
spirit of hurry that so bedevils its elders. Out with 
them, then! Let the walls be high enough to give them 
seclusion, let them have undisturbed long hours alone 
there, let them come to feel and comprehend the sure, 
slow methods of nature, its honesty and beauty. Let 
them have a place where they can romp and shout and 
tumble, and let them learn also how much patience and 
devotion is required to bring even a flower to per¬ 
fection. 
My own earliest recollection is of an English garden 
where the fragrance of wall-flowers lay sweet from June 
to November, and where we were occasionally kept 
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