there, like a lighthouse across a harbor, or like a
mirror, which you hang not in your parlor door, but at the far end of
the room."

"When you come back you shall see it there," is the reply.

Sometimes, yet not often, a contestant is met who does not want advice,
and who can hardly hide his scorn for book statements and experts. The
present writer came upon one last year who "could not see what beauty
there was in John Smith's garden, yet we had given him and his wife the
capital prize!"

Frequently one finds the house of a competitor fast locked and dumb, its
occupants being at work in some mill or shop. Then if the visit is one
of official inspection a card stating that fact and dated and signed on
the spot is left under the door, and on its reverse side the returning
householder finds printed the following:

"In marking for merit your whole place is considered your garden. It is
marked on four points: (1) Its layout, or ground plan; (2) its
harmonies--of arrangement as to color of blooms and as to form and size
of trees, shrubs and plants; (3) its condition--as to the neatness and
order of everything; and (4) its duration--from how early in the year to
how late it will make a pleasing show.

"Mow your lawn as often as the mower will cut the grass, but also keep
it thoroughly weeded. As a rule, in laying out your plantings avoid
straight lines and hard angles; the _double_ curve, or wave line, is the
line of grace. Plant all the flowers you wish, few or many, but set
shrubs at their back to give stronger and more lasting effects when the
flowers are out of season as well as while they are in bloom.

"Try to plant so as to make your whole place one single picture of a
_home_, with the house the chief element and the boundary-lines of the
lot the frame. Plant on all your lot's boundaries, plant out the
foundation-lines of all its buildings; but between these plantings keep
the space grassed only, and open. In these house and boundary borders
let your chief plantings be shrubs, and so have a nine months' instead
of a three months' garden."

The secretary's tour completed and his score of all the gardens
tabulated, a list is drawn from it of the one hundred and fifty best
gardens, and a second circuit of counsel and inspection, limited to this
greatly reduced number, is made by the president of the institute, who
marks them again on the same four points of merit.

These two markings, averaged, determine the st