THE LADIES' FLORAL CABINET. 
55 
of mouldy ink-bottles on her own desk was filled with 
fresh Violets and Houstonias that her little scholars had 
placed there of their own accord. 
“ So these little country children love flowers as well 
as I. Won’t we have some famous window-gardens be¬ 
fore the term closes !” and picking up her bell and Bible 
she called the school to order, and after Scripture read¬ 
ing was soon busily engaged in organizing classes. 
Quick to plan and quick to execute, before a week 
had passed Hetty and her pupils had six little window- 
gardens well under way. 
A carpenter in the neighborhood furnished her with 
a quantity of thin boards, and of these she constructed, 
with some help from the boys, six boxes as long as the 
school-room windows were wide, and eight inches deep 
and a foot in width. These were filled with soil, not 
that taken from the school grounds, for those knolls of 
red sand would have failed to sprout even a Parsley 
weed, but rich loam from the woods and fine dressing 
that the children brought in baskets from their homes, 
with enough sand to cut the mixture. 
After the boxes had been fastened in their places on 
the wide window-sills, seeds of Morning Glory, Nastur¬ 
tiums, Canary Vine and Sweet Peas were sown along 
the edges of the boxes nearest the ^glass, and the re¬ 
maining spaces were sown with bright, early flowering 
annuals—since the term would close before some annuals 
would come into flower. 
The children were in such haste to see green things 
growing in their boxes, Hetty encoui’aged them in bring¬ 
ing roots of wild vines from the woods, which were 
transplanted into these window-gardens—Wild Myrtle, 
Pigeon Vines and tiny Ferns finding a congenial home 
in the woodsy loam in which they were encouraged to 
grow. 
Sunlight and moisture combined, soon coaxed the 
seed-germs above ground, and as the earth cracked 
and the tender green leaves unfolded themselves, 
Hetty grew almost as interested as her little pupils 
in watching the plants shoot upward, and taught 
them many a practical, pleasant botany lesson as they 
gathered each day around those fast-greening window¬ 
sills. 
There was such a scramble each morning to see who 
should water the plants, Hetty found it advisable to 
assign each window to certain pupils, three little gar¬ 
deners to a window, since her school numbered 
eighteen scholars. 
A spirited but pleasant rivalry thus sprang up among 
the children as to whose window should be most beauti¬ 
ful, and whose plants should thrive the best. 
A net-work of twine was formed, reaching from the 
back-edge of the boxes to the window-tops, on which 
the vines clambered and crossed themselves, making 
living curtains of green. 
A few foliage plants, Geraniums and fast-growing 
Caleus of different colors and markings, were obtained, 
In the culture of flowers there cannot, by their 
very nature, be anything solitary or exclusive. The 
wind that blows over the cottage porch sweeps over 
the ground of the nobleman; and the rain descends 
over the just and the unjust: so it communicates to all 
and their gayly-blotched leaves added much to the 
beauty of the little gardens, while the gift of some 
healthy Pansy roots and a thrifty pink Oxalis made all 
their hearts rejoice. 
The children brought rusty pint basins and old tin 
cans from their play-houses, and from them Hetty 
selected six, crotcheting for each one a gay worsted net¬ 
ting, in which the basins were placed. These, when 
filled with German Ivy, Wandering Jew and Maurandia 
vines, made very pretty hanging-baskets suspended in 
the windows. 
When the sun grew too hot for the vines, and they 
wilted in the glare of its fierce rays, there were always 
little hands eagerly ready to pin a screen of paper be¬ 
tween them and the heated glass. 
The first blossom that opened was a tiny, blue Swan 
River Daisy. The primer class saw it first, and smiles, 
and nods, and whirlings of little heads to face that win¬ 
dow warned their teacher of the appearance of the 
flower. 
A row of tall Gilia Flowers next opened their buds 
and proved to be full, double flowers, crimson and white, 
that branched and blossomed through the summer days, 
a succession of gay flower stalks, till the frosts nipped 
them lifeless. 
Morning Glories and orange-flaming Nasturtiums soon 
followed, and, during the remainder of the term, those 
six windows vied with each other to produce the gayest 
flowers, the heaviest net-work of vines. And a bower 
of beauty that old school-house became. 
Mothers, who never before had met their children 
under its roof, or visited a school since their own girl¬ 
hood, were inveigled to this room by their little ones’ 
enthusiastic descriptions of their window-gardens, and 
promises of thrifty slips of rare Geraniums, Coleus and 
Ice Plants. 
Once there they became interested, not only in the 
plants and slips that were broken for them, but in the 
class-exercises of their children, who proudly recited 
their perfectly-prepared lessons before their mothers, 
and joined with their teacher in her request that they 
often visit their school. 
Keen, maternal eyes were not slow to take in the 
dirty, crumbling plastering, the sagging sills and cracks 
in the walls, through which the wind puffed in little 
gusts, as they sat in grim silence before the school with 
needles flashing in and out fast-growing blue socks. 
Sharp maternal tongues were not slow to speak when 
their own firesides were again reached, and “ a new 
schoolhouse we must have ” was drummed in paternal 
ears till they were glad to build for their children a 
neat, comfortable school-building, with modern im¬ 
provements, and fenced grounds so richly fertilized that 
plants and shrubbery thriftily took root in them, form- 
'ing shade and beauty for the little people to enjoy—and 
all because of those six window-gardens or those old 
warped sills. Clarissa Potter. 
gardeners, both rich and poor, an interchange of 
pleasure and enjoyment, and the gardener and the rich 
man, in developing or enhancing a fruitful flavor or a 
delightful scent, is in some sort the gardener of every¬ 
body else .—Charles Dickens. 
