"
Maybe that is why Adam and Eve were apprenticed to it so very young.
It should have been said before that in advance of the award of prizes
some very pleasant music and song were given from the platform by a few
Smith College girls, and that then the company were shown stereopticon
pictures of a number of their own gardens as they looked during the past
summer and as they had looked when, a few years ago,--although seemingly
but yesterday,--their owners began to plan and to plant.
The contrasts were amazing and lent great emphasis to the two or three
truths we have here dwelt on probably long enough. To wit: first, that,
as a rule, all true gardeners are grown-ups; second, that therein lies
the finest value of concerted gardening; third, that the younger the
grown-up the better, for the very reason that the crowning recompenses
of true gardening come surely, but come late; and fourth, that,
nevertheless, gardening yields a lovely amplitude of immediate rewards.
For instance, this gathering in our People's Institute also, before the
announcement of prizes, took delight in hearing reported the aggregate
of the flowers, mostly of that season's planting, distributed by a
considerable number of the competitors to the shut-in and the bereaved.
This feature of the movement had been begun only the previous year, and
its total was no more than some three thousand dozens of flowers; but
many grateful acknowledgments, both verbal and written, prove that it
gave solace and joy to many hearts and we may call it a good beginning.
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