e of the wind among the leaves.

A wondrous floor is the garden's cathedral of emerald green in the
summer, sprinkled with flowers, of ermine whiteness in the winter,
sparkling with the diamonds of frost. Its choir is the winds, the
singing birds and the hum of insects. Its builder and maker is God. Man
goeth to his garden in the springtime, and, behold, all is mystery.
There is the mystery of life about him, in the flowing sap in the trees,
the springing of the green grass, the awakening of the insect world, the
hatching of the worm from the egg, the changing of the worm into the
butterfly.

The seed the gardener holds in his hand is a mystery. He knows what it
will produce, but why one phlox seed will produce a red blossom and
another a white is to him a miracle. He wonders at the prodigality of
nature. In her economy, what is one or ten thousand seeds! She scatters
them with lavish hand from ragweed, thistle or oak. If man could make
but the single seed of the ragweed, he could make a world. The distance
between a pansy and a planet is no greater than between man and a pansy.
The gardener sees the same infinite care bestowed upon the lowest as
upon the highest form of life, and he wonders at it. He looks into the
face of a flower, scans the butterfly and notes the toadstool and sees
that each is wonderful.

From the time he enters his garden in the springtime until he leaves it
in the autumn, he will find a place and a time to worship in his
cathedral. He enters it with the seed in his hand in the spring, and as
he rakes away the ripened plants in the autumn he finds something still
of the mystery of life. A puff-ball is before him, and he muses on its
forming. The little puff-ball stands at one end of the scale of life and
he, man, at the other, "close to the realm where angels have their
birth, just on the boundary of the spirit land." From the things visible
in our garden we learn of the things invisible, and strong the faith of
him who kneeling in adoration of the growing plant looks from nature to
nature's God and finds the peace which passeth understanding.

Bringing the Producer and Consumer Together.

R. S. MACKINTOSH, HORTICULTURAL SPECIALIST, AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION
DIVISION, UNIVERSITY FARM, ST. PAUL.

The introduction of Mr. Producer to Mr. Consumer directly, and not by
proxy, is the chief desire of the present time. The fact remains,
however, that in the vast majority of cases Messrs. Proxy