Among my own earliest recollections come a first view of the starry sky and the discovery of Heaven.  No one called attention to the stars, they spoke themselves to a child of four or five and declared “the glory of God.”  Heaven was not on high among these glorious stars, however.  It was a grassy place with flowers and sunshine.  It had to be Heaven because you went through the cemetery to reach it, and because it was so bright and flowery and there were no graves in it.  I never found it again, because I had forgotten how to get there.

Another very early memory is one of grief, to see from the window how the gardener was mowing down all the daisies, and there were so many, in the grass; and yet another is of a high, grassy, sunny field with a little stream running far down below.  It was not really far and there was nothing particularly beautiful in the place to grown-up eyes, but the beholder was very small and loved it dearly.  To his Art and Blue Heaven Stevenson might have added Sun and Green Grass.  For he knew what grassy places are to the child, and that “happy play in grassy places” might well be Heaven to the little one.

A most interesting little book called What is a Kindergarten?[22] was published some years ago in America.  It is written by a landscape gardener, and contains most valuable suggestions as to how best to use for a Kindergarten or Nursery School plots of ground which may be secured for that purpose.  Naturally the writer has much to say on the laying out and stocking the available space to the best advantage, choosing the most suitable positions for the house, where the teacher must live, he says, to supply the atmosphere of a home; for animal hutches, for sand-heaps and seesaws; for the necessary shelter, for the children’s gardens, and for the lawn, for even on his smallest plan, a “twenty-five-foot lot,” we find “room for a spot of green.”  Later he explains that for this green one must use what will grow, and if grass will not perhaps clover will.  The way in which the trees and plants are chosen is most suggestive.  Beauty and suitability are always considered, but he remembers his own youth, and also considers the special joys of childhood.  For it is not Nature lessons that come into his calculations but “the mere association of plants and children.”  So the birch tree is chosen, partly for its grace and beauty, but also because of its bark, for one can scribble on its papery surface; the hazel, because children delight in the catkins with their showers of golden dust, and the nut “hidden in its cap of frills and tucks.”  And he adds:  “How much more alluring than the naked fruit from the grocer’s sack are these nuts, especially when dots for eyes and mouth are added, and a whole little face is tucked within this natural bonnet.”

[Footnote 22:  G. Hansen, pub.  Elder, Morgan & Shepherd, San Francisco, 1891.]