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 [pg 112]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 for any other.”