Chapter X: Part II: The Chief's Garden Talks (5)

"In some places where there are summer colonies it is possible to sell bunches of flowers. I knew of a case where big bunches of sweet peas were brought to the hotel every morning. These sold for ten and fifteen cents the bunch and went like hot cakes.

"The girls may think of all sorts of wicker mats and trays that would make the garden tea more attractive. One ought to think of the aesthetic side.

"I have not mentioned working for others. Hire yourself out. Let it be known that you can and will weed, mow lawns, plant and transplant for so much per hour. Someone may be going off for a few weeks; see to it that you are the boy or girl to be employed. Prove yourself faithful.

"In the winter make garden utensils and also attend to the bulb end of it. At Christmas time you could do a big business.

"Someone might make and bottle kerosene emulsion. Paste on each bottle directions for using. Print very neatly, so it will look well.

"There are doubtless many other ways of making money. But, above all, do not neglect the other side; give away some things from your garden and some of your labour, too. If all you think of is the making of money the soul and heart of you all will get as small and shrivelled as a dry pea. Who wants to be stingy? Better never to make money than to grow like that. Don't let people pay you for everything you do. Do certain things for mother and father for nothing. The home garden is as much theirs as yours. Wouldn't it be ludicrous if your mother said, 'No, Katharine, you cannot have those flowers to carry to school unless you pay ten cents for them,' How cross you would be! Just as absurd, is it not, for you to suggest that you cannot work on that same garden unless you receive ten cents an hour? No, that is all wrong. And if any one of you feels that way do one of two things--either sit down and 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.