NETTIE'S GARDEN.
HAVE any of you children a garden of your own this summer? My little Nettie has one, and it has pleased me very much to see how nicely she has kept it, so free from weeds and grass.
I have not kept pace with her at all, for my garden is much larger than hers, and I have not as much time to weed as Nettie. There is one bed, which has troubled me so much that I almost gave up in despair. The grass grew so fast and rank that it almost hid my border of mignonette.
However, I kept to work at it, and now at midsummer feel quite rewarded; for my mignonette greets me with its sweet perfume every time I walk through the garden.
Now my Nettie is usually a happy little girl, but she has always had a hasty temper, and is never willing to take time enough for anything. If the buttons on her shoes happened to be set a little too far back, she would throw the button-hook across the room.
If the tangles would not come right out of her hair in the morning, she would cry out, " Oh dear!" and away the comb would fly after the buttonhook. When I talked to Nettie, and told her how much it grieved me to see her so impatient, she would feel sorry and promise to do better. But the next time anything came along to vex her, she would seem to have entirely forgotten her promise; and I felt as discouraged as when the grass would repeatedly grow up around the mignonette, after I had, as I thought, cleared it completely away.
One day not long ago, after one of her bursts of impatience, I said to her, "Nettie, you have taken good care of your garden out of doors this summer; but you have also a little garden in the house to tend, and this I fear you are not caring for so well. I see one weed, little now; but it is trying hard to grow large and strong, and outrank the beautiful flowers that are trying to grow with it. Can you tell me the name of this weed?"
"O mamma," said Nettie, throwing her arms around my neck, "I know what you mean now, and you would call the weed 'impatience.'"
"Well, Nettie," I said, "I want you to be as diligent in rooting it up as mamma has been with the grass in her mignonette bed, or as you yourself have been with your own little garden." And Nettie promised to try hard to do so.
Dear children, watch well this little garden in the house; pluck the weeds by the root while they are young and tender, or before you know it, they will claim the whole ground, leaving no room for the lovely flowers that should blossom in your hearts to cheer and delight not only yourselves, but all around you.
AUNT LAURA.
IDLE heads and hands will come to grief.