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“the heritage of the
. England boy.
and the kitch
Copyright, 1900, by David C. Cook Publishing Company.
Vou 14. No. 18.
DAVID C. COOK PUBLISHING CO., ELGIN,
ILL., AND 36 WASHINGTON ST., CHICAGO.
MAY 6, 1900.
For Young People's Welly.
THE PRIZE FRONT YARD.
BY CHAS. STUART PRATT.
IN TWO CHAPTERS.
CHAPTER II.
Qj EDDY J. was not a hand-
some boy. He was slim,
and his hair was straight
and tents and he was
freckled. He had a Meh
full forehead, though,
there was sensitive
curve in his lips, and his
b gray’ -blue eyes sometimes
had a look of vision i . lis hands were
supple and well-: ‘shaped, and he bad the knack of
doing deftly many things.
Teddy J. was not a very confident boy—per-
haps because he was
“But if 1 could get the fifty—it would help
fix even thar
ould, but
She aid ot finish the’ ‘sentence, and Teddy J.
went off to his evening chores. And as he
worked he kept thinking—thinking—thinking.
Supper-time came; bed-time came; and still
with all his thinking he had not found a way
for his desire. Ile kissed his mother good-night,
took the Utde brass lamp, and went up to his
attic cham!
Ile was half undressed, sitting on the edge of
the bed and pulling off his stockings, when, as he
0 sat, facing the south window, he suddenly
stopped still—and into his gray-blue eyes came
the look of vision. He saw something in the
ne and, too, in a flash, he saw much that
not in the w indow and had never been seen
he fore.
Teddy J. had an eye for the uncommon beau-
ties of nature—perhaps I would better say an
2s
to do—if we can’t buy flower seeds, I'll use the
seo we've got! We've got all kinds of ve;
table seeds—and father always saves so many
there'll be plenty for me. I got the idea from
the carrot in my window. You know how
feathery-ferny the foliage is—think what a
pretty edging a row will make each side the
path! And a little way back Ul plant a wide
band of broad-leaved beets, running from gate
to terrace, and then curling round, one to right
and one to left, into a great mass o or rich color,
red-green and brown-red and bro nd be-
tween—well, wax beans with yellow. white pods,
perhaps—and a row of agriculturals with pods
ved-mottled—and—” but here he had to halt for
breath.
Ilis mother was mixing meal for muffins.
“Who ever would have thought it!” she ex-
claimed. “ But maybe you can—there’s a won-
derful variety of leafage, in form and color, and
the tip of his nose, and often through the twi-
ne into the dim, cool edge of the night.
y the middle of May the seeds were mostly
in; and not only seeds, but lusty, great ‘“ roots,”
selected the fall before for growing new crops
of seed. Teddy J. knew how the carrots would
give stately stalks. with dipping disks of gray-
white bloom, and how the onions would send up
their fluted columns to burst into flowery
crowns, as the soaring trail of a rocket bursts at
the top into star:
Vhen the seeds began to break ground, there
was the morning skirmish with cut-worms,
which came marauding in the night like a band
of treacherous Sioux. And there were timcs of
drouth, and there were re-plantings, and trans-
Plantings, and waterings, and the coaxing along
f the backward. But at last the outcome of
all his planning and working began to crown his
labor—and the plain front yard of the farm-
something in the way of bloom—yes, Teddy, I! house was transforming into the front yard of
y ws 's strange pro-
ceedings were quickly the
imaginative, nd his
imagination pictured, in
5 m, the ob-
ald
timidity, and he had per-
sistence, a certain
grim endurance which is
New
The house ahead,
which had always on
the boy’s home,
typical New England
farm - house — square-
walled and plain-roofed,
white and green-blinded,
sitting-room
and parlor, each with
two windows at the front
and one at the side, and
behind these a bed-room
On either hand, at the
the picket-
stood the
entrance to
fenced yard,
cherries.
And every year the
talk of the neighborhood,
chaffing in the village. ‘The
Simmons boys never failed
to follow their good-morn-
inquiries about
his market
How falls the song of birds when dawn is near
Upon the heart-to fill it with delight!
Loud roaring stornis that ushered in the year
Have sunk to rest, and lo! day Follow 1s night.
William Zachary Gladwin. and still
peti ition
guess that he was in earn-
st.
One Saturday, as he
was watering the two
towering bushes of sum-
mer squash on the terrace,
whose golden chalices were
already glowing among the
great tropic leaves, he re-
ceived a
agement.
M
of encour-
st,
whistle of surprise,
looked at Mr.
Mr. Ellis whistled a longer
more surprised
whistle, and looked at Mr.
Norton.
his ineffective
arrows.
On this afternoon, Teddy J. did not as usuai
pass the front Bate and go around to the back
dcor—wh of course, nearest the pantry.
Instead, he deliberately opened the front gate,
stepped slowly along up two wooden
steps, and across a vittle terrace to the stone
step at the door. There he paused a moment,
glancing back over the yard, and- then went
in, and around by the sitting-room into the
kitchen.
woman, in a low wooden rocker by he
indow, was plaiting strips of cloth
braided rug—the old symbol and measure of
housewifely industry and economy. She had
the sweet, sober, patient, tired New England
face, and a cheery
“Why, Teddy,” the ‘exclaimed, “why do you
come in that
“Well, mother,” said Teddy J., setting his tin
dinner- -pail on the table and hea ing for the
pantry, “you see the B. C.—that’s Betterment
Club—is going in for front yards this year, and
so I came in through ours to get the Jay of the
land.”
2
when he had foraged the pantry
shelves, and reappeared with a quarter of an
apple pie, and a slightly smaller section of home-
made cheese, he told his mother about the white
I want one of those
prizes—the first,” he wound up.
“TI wish you might have it,” said his mother,
“but,” the cheery voice sinking to a sigh, “ that
would mean things we haven't got, and can't
get—fiower seeds, bulbs, and fine plants.”
“Couldn’t we—possibly—” began Teddy J.,
but in his heart he knew how it was before his
mother spoke.
“Tt has been | such a hard year, you know!
And, as father says, you must go thr rough the
Simmons High !”
uncommon eye for the common beauties of na-
ture. The drama of storm-clouds on the hills,
the splendors of sunset color, of which half the
old and young alike of Rocky Hill were heedless
r unconscious, held him as a ga’
paintings holds the connoisseur. Nor did the
less obvious beauties escape him.
ever going to his mother in little ecstasies over
the jeweled backs of tiny beeties, or the mar-
vels in a mimic forest of moss.
Only a few days before, he had discovered the
exquisite tints and shapes of the spring sprout-
ings of vegetables in the cellar. [is mother
had cut the top from a big orange carrot, whose
primrose leaves were starting out like the fronds
of some golden dream-land fern, and showed
him how to hollow it out like a cup and hang it,
bottom up and filled with water, in the sunny
south window of his attic chamber. Day by
day he had watched the leaves ng into a
fountain spray of tender green, and. it had given
him as genuine a pleasure as the millionaire
finds in the unfolding of a priceless orchi
this. simple hanging-basket which
opened up the vision to his inner eye, As an
artist, at Tome sudden suggestion, sees clear be-
fore him the picture he will paint, Teddy J.
saw the window fade, and in its place come clear
the front yard he might make—and would
make !
With a happy shout he scrambled into bed,
but it was a long time before he slept, and
when he did sleep it was to dream of an endless
procession of front yards, of various and won-
oe kinds.
‘he next morning Teddy J. was “p early.
Goins down stairs two steps ai # time, he burst
on his mother in the kitchen like a sunrise. His
eyes sparkled, his face glowed. he tingled with
life and o_o from top to toe, Te was al-
most handsom
“ Mother,” said he, “I know what I’m going
do think maybe you can!” And her face
lighted up like Teddy’s own.
‘There’s scarlet beans—I’ll build a rustic
trellis for the front door, and run scarlet beans
all over it. And each side i'll have a huge
bunch of cow-horn squashes—there'll be the
great leaves, and the big yellow cups of blos-
soms, and then the nubby, orange-colored crook-
neck squashes. And between the front win-
dows, and beyond them (if father hasn’t fed
out all the seed to the chickens), I'll have sun-
flow
standing up against the white house
like sentinels with shining brass helmets,” said
his Bother, quite entering into the spirit of
the
“ er along the edge of the terrace,” con-
tinued Teddy, “I'll have blue quilled onions,
with yellow-green parsnips to back them—and
tall peas along the fence.”
“Champions,” put in his mother, “ they grow
so tall, and have such a lovely Bras -blue bloom
over them, like the bloom on a plat
“And every little way,
pumpkins, and run them up the posts and alon
the top like a giant grape-vine,” went on Teddy
J. “And below the terrace, in the middle each
side of the grass, I'll have a mighty tall clump
of Indian corn—castor beans ‘Il be nowhere—
and yellow mustard in a golden ring round it,
and purple-leayed turnips in a ring round thai.
And—well, that’s the idea, the beginning. Of
course I’ll have to think about it, and plan a
lot—and work a lot—but I know I can make
something of it all—you’ll see I will, mother!”
So saying, he took up a tin milk-pail, and went
off to the barn to help his father with the morn-
ing chores.
That very night Teddy J. began to lay out the
front yard, to: spade and hoe and rake; and
every night, after supper and the night chores,
plant
he went on, working till the sweat trickled off
Then, after a little ‘alk,
Mr. Norton asked, “ Bu
why did you choose vegetable plants in place of
lower plants for your ya!
“Tt wasn’t Cholee—or, yes, wa:
Tfobson’s choice,” replied aay a “aogbing a a
bit awkwardly. And then he told how it was,
and about the sprouting carrot.
Vell, my boy,” remarked Mr. Ellis, as they
drove away, “I'm glad you had the courage of
your convictions. You’ye struck something
new, and its decorative promise is considerable.
I shall watch this yard with interest.”
ter in the season, when the
Indian corn had reached a_ splendid,
growth, and was spindling at the top, and
ing over with sheeny sil! the ends of the
ears, Mr. Ellis stood for a long time before the
two stately fountains of leafage, rising, falling,
like green water in the shimmering light.
“My boy,” said he at last, “ you’ve given me
idea—several of them. For one thing, I
shall make Indian corn the great decorative
feature of our city park next season. And if
some © day in the summer you will let me send
for , I shall like to show you what I have
don
Teddy J. could hardly believe his ears, could
mmer his thanks, could hardly wait
until Mr. Ellis should go, and he be free to rush
in and tell his mother.
Before the end of the summer, the fame of the
front yards of Rocky Ilill had spread far beyond
the borders or the town. The success of the
adside movement was repeated, and sur-
passed; the “ heautified town” was becoming
a beacon among the hills.
A spirit of friendly rivalry Possessed the peo-
ple, and every boy strove, not only to make his
door-yard beautiful, but to make it beautiful in
some way unlike its neighbors,
variety was the result. ‘There were
lawns, with decoration as simple and severe as
Greek fretwork; there were yards of Gothic
a.