Last, but not by any means least, comes that delightful combination of work and play known as gardening, and the lighter forms of farming. Every child naturally delights in having a little patch of ground of his own in which he can dig and rake and weed and plant seeds and watch the plants grow. In our large cities, where most of the houses have not sufficient space about them to allow children to have gardens of their own at home, land is being bought near school-houses and laid out as school gardens, and the work done in them is counted as part of the school work. Indeed, so important is this work considered as a part of school education, that some large cities are actually building their schools out in the open country, so that they can have plenty of space for playgrounds and gardens and shops, and carrying the children from the central parts of the city out to them by trolley or train in the morning and back at night. [Illustration: SCHOOL GARDENING] Wherever you happen to live, you should engage in healthy happy, vigorous play in the open air at least two to four hours a day all the year round. If you live in a town, while it will not be quite so easy to reach the woods and the fields and the swimming holes and the skating ponds, yet you will have a large number of playmates of your own age, and have good opportunity to play the games calling for half a dozen or more players; and there will be plenty of vacant lots and open spaces, or little-traveled streets, in which to play base-ball and foot-ball and Prisoner's Base and tag. And although you may not be within reach of the best zoological garden ever made,--a barnyard,--yet you can make occasional trips to the city "Zoo," or the botanical gardens, or to parks. Healthful Methods of Study. In the growth and training of the highest, most valuable, and most wonderful part of the body--the brain--the same methods followed in our outdoor games will give the best results. We do not create intelligence by study, nor manufacture a brain for ourselves, in school. We simply develop and strengthen and improve the brains and the mental power that we were born with. [Illustration: A WASTED CHANCE FOR PUBLIC HEALTH A large area in the residence section of a city, now used as a dump, from which dust and disease can spread. It could easily be cleared and used for children's gardens, or a playground or athletic field.]