rden in New York City on the roof of a big building
where the janitor smuggled up the needed soil in baskets.

The school gardens in New York City, some in a space as small as a
hearth rug, one yard by two, show how to use a very small patch of
land to the best advantage. Nor need it take more time than you can
afford.

"Some of the cultivators of city lots on Long Island who kept count
of the number of days they worked, show the surprising conclusion
that they earned, not farm wages (seventy-five cents a day with
board and lodging for the worker), but mechanics' wages (four
dollars per day) for every working day; as, for instance, a
stone-cutter, assisted by his two boys, worked fifty hours and made
$120.23." ("Cultivation of Vacant Lots, New York," page 12); and
four city lots is a very little farm.

But though one may not own even a little farm, almost any one who
wants to can have a home garden--it needs but a small plot of land.
Nor need we be discouraged because acquaintances who play at
gardening tell us that their vegetables cost them more than if they
bought them.

They naturally would, with thoughtless methods of cultivation, with
the selection of crops and the purchase of seeds left to an
uneducated man who does all his work the way he saw his grandfather
do it.

Nor are we to be discouraged even by the "gentleman farmer" who
runs a model farm, a model of how not to do it, for, notwithstanding
its large capital, it seldom pays.

I am passing such a farm now as I write in the train--it is
surrounded by a cut stone wall. Do you suppose the owner business
would pay if it were run in the same way that his farm is run? We
know the story of the white sparrow to find which would bring luck
to the farm--but it was out only at daybreak; the farmer got up each
morning to find the sparrow and found a lot of other things to
attend to, which did bring luck to the farm. I don't think the owner
of that wall worked at it, at daybreak.

The time is not far distant when the builders of homes in our
American cities will be compelled to leave room for a garden, in
order to meet the requirements of the people In the mad rush for
wealth we have overlooked the natural state, but we see a healthy
reaction setting in. With the improvements in steam and electricity,
the revolutionizing of transportation, the cutting of the arbitrary
telephone charges, it is becoming possible to live at a distance
from our business. May we n