served that a part of another little farm was left
untouched on account of being very rough, full of holes, and covered
with stone and bricks. Part of this farm was below the street grade
and subject to overflow, but it was larger than the others--nine
tenths of an acre. He offered to exchange, saying he did not mind
the extra work.

His offer was accepted. In a few days the stones and bricks had been
thrown into the holes and covered with dirt. The low places had been
filled in. It was a work in which the whole family joined. A small
house was rented in the immediate neighborhood in lieu of their one
room near the foul alleys of the city slum.

Every inch of the soil was utilized. A rosy hue took the place of
the pale, wan cheek of a few months before. And now the harvest has
come, and the winter's store can be enumerated. Thirty bushels of
potatoes, four bushels of turnips, one bushel of carrots, thirty
gallons of sauerkraut, fifteen gallons of catsup, five gallons of
pickled beans, one hundred quarts of canned tomatoes, fifty quarts
of canned corn, twenty quarts of beans, one thousand or more fine
celery stalks, and many other things. Warm clothing has replaced the
badly worn garments of nine months ago. A few pieces of furniture
have been added. The boy has been provided with a small capital for
his little business. ("Vacant Lot Cultivation," Reprint from N. Y.
_Charities Review._) Better labor would of course get even better
results.

The personal benefits that have come to a few individual cases, are
largely the same that all the gardeners enjoyed in New York and
elsewhere.

An old colored woman--a grandmother--who had just been released from
one of the hospitals where she had been treated for a long time for
pleurisy, asked for a garden. It was more than a mile to the nearest
plot, but she was quite willing to go even that distance if she
could get a garden. At first, owing to her weakened condition, she
was forced to work slowly and for short periods only, but a little
assistance enabled her to get a garden started. The work proceeded
so well that more land was added to her small holding, and most of
her waking hours were now spent either in or near the garden,
working among the tender plants or watching them grow. Before the
season was half spent she had developed one of the best gardens in
the whole plot. Her surplus produce became so large that she had to
devote most of her time to gathering and selling