one of the stars by which civilization
must guide its onward course.

It may well be supposed that those whose office it is to award the
twenty-one prizes of our garden competition among our eleven hundred
competitors have an intricate task. Yet some of its intricacies add to
the pleasure of it.

One of these pleasing complications arises from our division of the
field of contest into seven parts, in each of which prizes must be given
to three contestants. Another comes from our rule that not alone the
competitors who show the best gardening are to be rewarded, but also
those who have made the most earnest effort and largest progress toward
the best gardening. Under this plan one whose work shows a patient and
signal progress in the face of many disadvantages may outrank on our
prize list a rival whose superior artistic result has been got easily
under favoring conditions and reveals no marked advance beyond the
season before.

After the manner of Dunfermline again, our rules are that no gardener by
trade and no one who hires help in his garden may compete. Any friend
may help his friend, and any one may use all the advice he can get from
amateur or professional. Children may help in the care of the gardens,
and many do; but children may not themselves put gardens into the
competition.

"If the head of the house is the gardener-in-chief," shrewdly argued one
of our committee, "the children, oftener than otherwise, will garden
with him, or will catch the gardening spirit as they grow up; but if the
children are head-gardeners we shall get only children's gardening. We
want to dispel the notion that flower-gardening is only woman's work and
child's play."

Our rule against hired labor sets naturally a maximum limit to the
extent of ground a garden may cover. Our minimum is but fifty square
yards, including turf, beds, and walks, and it may be of any shape
whatever if only it does not leave out any part of the dooryard, front
or rear, and give it up to neglect and disorder. To the ear even fifty
square yards seems extensive, but really it is very small. It had so
formidable a sound when we first named it that one of our most esteemed
friends, pastor of a Catholic church in that very pretty and thrifty
part of Northampton called for its silk mills Florence, generously added
two supplementary prizes for gardens under the limit of size. This
happy thought had a good effect, for, although in the first and second
years