Plants and their children

by Frances Theodora Parsons

From these windows you watch the first flying lesson; and you laugh to see the little cowards cling to the branch close by, paying little heed to their parents’ noisy indignation. All the same, you wish that you too might suddenly grow a pair of wings, and join the little class, and learn to do the one thing that seems even more delightful than tree climbing.

That you children long to be out of the schoolroom this minute, out in the orchard so full of possibilities, I do not wonder a bit. But as the big people have decided that from now on for some months you must spend much of your time with lesson books, I have a plan to propose.

What do you say to trying to bring something of the outdoor places that we love into the schoolroom, which we do not love as much as we should if lessons were always taught in the right way?

Now let us pretend—and even grown-up people, who can do difficult sums, and answer questions in history and geography better than children, cannot “pretend” one half so well—now let us pretend that we are about to spend the morning in the orchard.

Here we go, out of the schoolroom into the air and sunshine, along the road, up the hill, till we reach the stone wall beyond which lies our orchard.

Ah! it is good to get into the cool of the dear, friendly trees. And just now, more than ever, they seem friendly to you boys and girls; for they are heavy with apples,—beautiful red and golden apples, that tempt you to clamber up into the green sea of leaves above.

Now let us “pretend” that you have had your fill, and are ready to gather quietly about me on the long grass. But first, please, one of you bring me an apple. Let it be well-grown and rounded, with a rosy, sun-burned cheek; for, as we are to spend some little time with this apple, the more perfect it is in shape, the richer in color, the sounder all the way through, the better. It is good to be as much as possible with things that are beautiful and wholesome and hearty, even though they are only apples.

Fig. 1

Here we have (Fig. [1]) a fine specimen. What do you know, any of you, about this apple? Perhaps this seems a strange question. But when we see something that is fine and beautiful, is it strange that we wish to know its history? If I see a man or a woman who seems to me all that a man or woman should be; if he or she is fine-looking and fine-acting, straight and strong, and beautiful and kind, and brave and generous,—I ask, “Who is he? Where does she come from? What have they done?”