Father Gallon's people took prizes for gardens above the minimum
limit in size, while his own two prizes fell to contestants not in his
flock, yet only in the third year did it become to all of us quite as
plain as a pikestaff that fifty square yards are only the one-fiftieth
part of fifty yards square, and that whoever in Northampton had a
dooryard at all had fifty square yards. In 1903 more than two hundred
and fifty gardens were already in the contest but every one was large
enough to compete for the Carnegie prizes, and the kind bestower of the
extra ones (withdrawn as superfluous), unselfishly ignoring his own
large share of credit, wrote:

"Your gardens have altered the aspect of my parish."

Such praise is high wages. It is better than to have achieved the very
perfection of gardening about any one home. We are not trying to raise
the world's standard of the gardening art. Our work is for the home and
its indwellers; for the home and the town. Our ideal is a town of homes
all taking pleasant care of one another. We want to make all neighbors
and all homes esthetically interesting to one another, believing that
this will relate them humanely, morally and politically. We began with
those who pay no one to dig, plant or prune for them, but soon we went
further and ventured to open to gardens kept with hired service an
allied competition for a separate list of prizes. In this way we put
into motion, between two elements of our people which there are always
more than enough influences to hold sufficiently apart, a joint pursuit
of the same refining delight and so promoted the fellowship of an
unconflicting common interest. In degree some of us who use hired help
had already obtained this effect. Last season:

"Come," I often heard one of our judges say on his rounds, "see my own
garden some afternoon; I'll show you all the mistakes I've made!" And
some came, and exchanged seeds and plants with him.

"A high civilization," said an old soldier to me only a few days ago,
"must always produce great social inequalities. They are needed mainly
by and for those who see no need of them."

I admitted that the need is as real, though not so stern, as the need of
inequalities in military rank.

"But," I said, "in the military relation you must also vividly keep up,
across all inequalities of rank, a splendid sentiment of common interest
and devotion, mutual confidence and affection, or your army will be but
a broken weapon