Page:Oklahoma Arbor and Bird Day, Friday, March Twelfth, 1909.pdf/34

32 garden movement in the country school, though crude and unscientific to the expert, are to be commended, for they are a long advance over the do-nothing policy which has prevailed long enough. Let us have the courage to be pioneers in a movement that is right in itself, though we may not be able to see very far ahead. Manual training was held up to derision and laughed to scorn by those who were supposed, by themselves at least, to know all worth knowing in the theory and practice of education. Manual training flourished, however, and the school garden has at least a fighting chance. To contemplate with difficulties in country-school gardening is to do nothing, and while the average country school teacher is not as well trained, perhaps, as she should be, still this does not prevent her form learning something about school gardening and beginning to work in a limited way."

  I wandered lonely where the pine-trees made Against the bitter east their barricade, And, guided by its sweet Perfume, I found, within a narrow dell The trailing spring flower tinted like a shell Amid dry leaves and moss at my feet. From under dead boughs, for whose loss the pines Moaned ceaselessly overhead, the blossoming vines Lifted their glad surprise, While yet the bluebird smoothed in leafless trees His feathers ruffled by the chill sea-breeze, And snow-drifts lingering under April skies. As, pausing o'er the lonely flower I bent, I thought of lives thus lowly, clogged and pent, Which yet find room, Through care and cumber, coldness and decay, To lend a sweetness to the ungenial day, And make the sad earth happier for their bloom. —John Greenlief WhittierJohn Greenleaf Whittier [sic]. 