handed down from one generation to another? But when we
see the result, when the little one begins to do what its parents
and grandparents have done, is it not evident that the teaching
must have been given, though in some way beyond our ken? If Tommy's
mother had not taught him, there is at least an even chance that he
would have tried to grow red before he grew big. But he laid her
lesson to heart, and day by day, week by week, his rotundity
expanded, while his verdancy remained.

It was a very beautiful life that they lived in the garden; and if
the thoughts and feelings that unfolded there could be known,
perhaps they would seem even more wonderful than the things which
the old German gardener cultivated. Away at one end were the beds
of old-fashioned flowers: hollyhocks and phlox and stocks,
coreopsis and calliopsis, calendula and campanula, fox-gloves and
monks-hoods and lady-slippers. At the other end were the
strawberry-bed and the asparagus-bed. In between, there were long
rows of all kinds of vegetables and small fruits and fragrant
herbs.

Who can tell what ideas and emotions were stirring in those placid
companies of leguminous comrades? What aspirations toward a loftier
life in the climbing beans? What high spirits in the corn? What
light and airy dreams on the asparagus-bed? What philosophy among
the sage? Imagine what great schemes were hatching among the
egg-plants, and what hot feelings stung the peppers when the
raspberries crowded them!

Tommy, from his central place in the garden must have felt the
agitation of this mimic world around him. Many a time, no doubt, he
was tempted to give himself up to one or another of the contiguous
influences, and throw himself into the social tide for "one
glorious hour of crowded life." But his mother always held him
back.

"No, my Tommykin, stay with me. It is not for you to climb a pole
like a bean or wave in the wind like an asparagus stalk, or rasp
your neighbours like a raspberry. Be modest, be natural, be true to
yourself. Stay with me and grow fat."

When the sunshine of the long July days flooded the garden,
glistening on the silken leaves of the corn, wilting the
potato-blossoms, unfolding the bright yellow flowers of the okra
and the melon, Tom would fain have pushed himself out into the full
ti