ke a fence or hedge, and make it look snug and
pleasant within. Then, he had a row of corn, for he thought he should like
some green corn himself to roast. Then, he had one bed of beets and some
hills of muskmelons, and in one corner he planted some flower seeds, so
that he could have some flowers to put into his mother's glasses, for the
mantel-piece.

Rollo took great interest in laying out and planting his ground, and in
watching the garden when the seeds first came up; for all this was easy
and pleasant work. In the intervals, he used to play on his
pleasure-ground, planting and digging, and setting out, just as he
pleased.

Sometimes he, and James, and Lucy, would go out in the woods with his
little wheelbarrow, and dig up roots of flowers and little trees there,
and bring them in, and set them out here and there. But he did not proceed
regularly with this ground. He did not dig it all up first, and then form
a regular plan for the whole; and the consequence was, that it soon became
very irregular. He would want to make a path one day where he had set out
a little tree, perhaps, a few days before; and it often happened that,
when he was making a little trench to sow one kind of seeds, out came a
whole parcel of others that he had put in before, and forgotten.

Then, when the seeds came up in his playing-garden, they came up here and
there, irregularly; but, in his working-garden, all looked orderly and
beautiful.

One evening, just before sundown, Rollo brought out his father and mother
to look at his two gardens. The difference between them was very great;
and Rollo, as he ran along before his father, said that he thought the
working plan of making a garden was a great deal better than the playing
plan.

"That depends upon what your object is."

"How so?" said Rollo.

"Why, which do you think you have had the most amusement from, thus far?"

"Why, I have had most amusement, I suppose, in the little garden in the
corner."

"Yes," said his father, "undoubtedly. But the other appears altogether the
best now, and will produce altogether more in the end. So, if your object
is useful results, you must manage systematically, regularly, and
patiently; but if you only want amusement as you go along, you had better
do every day just as you happen to feel inclined."

"Well, father, which do you think is best for a boy?"

"For quite small boys, a garden for play is best. They have not patience
or industry enough