So long as habit or love of caring for the things lasted all went well.

The father found his recreation in planting the garden before breakfast, as in his boyhood.

The mother cared for flower and vegetable-garden, as she recalled her mother's life; she picked her own beans and corn, even if she did not cook the dinner.
But the _children_ had to hurry off to school, and it was a pity to call them early: they had lessons to learn in the afternoon.

To them the garden was work, not play as it should have been; so they failed to gain that contact with mother earth which gives inspiration as well as health; they failed to acquire a love of nature, became infected with the germ of gregariousness, preferred the glare of lights, the rush of hurrying crowds, and lost the relish for fresh air and quiet.

This second generation came to the city boarding-house and flat as soon as they were free, leaving their parents' houses to go the same way as the grandfather's farmhouse, into the hands of the foreigner not yet Americanized to high standards of cleanliness and orderliness.
These houses, too, are settling down into unkempt grounds with dilapidated porches and blinds.