nd be ashamed for a
good, long time and think of all the things done freely for you; or else
go take all the money in your own little bank at home, buy something
your mother wants, and give it, being glad, so glad you can get rid of
what you have been so stingy about.

"Give flowers to the poor, the sick at home and the sick in hospitals,
the church, the people you love, the people you think you don't love,
and the people who seem lonely and forlorn.

"Once upon a time there was made a wondrous garden. It was called the
earth. The flowers, the trees, the plants which afterwards became
through man's skill our staple products--all these were free, absolutely
free.

"If this is a true story, how can we be so small as always to make money
from this garden? Let us pay our debt to it freely and gladly.

"This is our last talk. Some of you already have started your early
vegetables and flowers. Instead of one coldframe we have four in our
family and one belongs to a girl.

"It is going to be a better year of gardening than before. Leston is
with us now. Another season there will be others. The school grounds
look well, and if you have noticed the entire village looks a little
better than ever before.

"We will shake hands all around. In a few weeks we shall have hands
quite dirty with good old garden soil. You may take your stools and
benches off with you, or leave them all here."

"We shall leave them," said Eloise; "for I am coming back often to sit
on my little cricket right on your hearth."

"I am a little large for a cricket," went on Albert; "but I'd not quit
this hearthstone, so my stool stays."

"And mine, too," each one added.

Off they trooped again, some down the country road, some up the road,
others across the fields, and George, as usual, on his old horse. They
shouted until out of sight.

"The best things in the world," the man murmured as he stepped out into
the open and drew into his lungs deep breaths of the fresh spring air.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Library of Work and Play:
Gardening and Farming., by Ellen Eddy Shaw

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GARDENING AND FARMING ***

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