Those boys and girls, planting their seeds of flower and fruit on the
sunny hillside and in the shaded nooks where the school gardens lay,
were not at all unlike the men and women who today plant the good seed
in the gardens of hearts that come to them in the glorious springtime of
life ready for the sowing. Like the boys and girls these older gardeners
are pleased with the picture of the result of their seed sowing. With
enthusiasm they enter upon the task of planting, with eagerness they
watch for the first appearance of results. And then Time enters in.
There is evidence of weeds; slugs and worms appear. Then comes the clear
call for the two great virtues of the sower who will win a
harvest--Labor and Patience. He must cultivate the soil, else only the
meager harvest can be his. The art of cultivation is the one so many
would-be harvesters fail to learn.

To realize what the art of cultivation can accomplish one needs to read
carefully the increase in the record of the producing power of certain
wheat fields in our country during the past four years. Courage comes
with the study of the reports of modern miracles accomplished through
the advice and instruction of the agricultural schools and colleges
which have escaped from the thraldom of the abstract. Every one should
look once into the faces of boys and girls of the rural schools who
having been instructed in the art of cultivation have practised it and
increased the value and quantity of the output on their fathers' farms,
ten-fold. It fills one with hope to look into the bright eager face of a
fourteen-year-old prize winner, holding side by side in his hand the
stalks of corn, one small and meager, the other rich and full, made so
by the art of cultivation which he has so patiently practised.

What the cultivation of the soil has accomplished in the agricultural