Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women - Wise Acres Yearbook (Ambler, PA)

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land. The canals are teeming with life, large families of children swarming over the tiny one-room sampans they call home. Now and then one drops overboard, but there are plenty more! In five hours I arrive in Hangchow, the beautiful, where I am met by my friend. We jump into rickshas and race thro the electric lighted streets, so narrow at times that a fat man has to draw in his corporosity to escape a bump. Hangchow was the summer play place of the Emperors, reached by canal from Peking. The longer portion of the Grand Canal was made in the sixth century, A. D., and it is almost 900 miles long. In places it is often 100 feet wide, with sides frequently faced with stone. Fine stone bridges, memorial arches, and lofty pagodas are its gems of architecture and over all is the wonderful atmospheric coloring with the vivid greens, reds, tans, indigo blues and browns, from which, no doubt, inspiration was supplied for the embroideries and pictures on silk. In the beautiful lake at Hangchow is the Emperor’s Island, connected by causeway to the mainland. We went across the lake in a boat, paddled thro beds of lotus and lilies ready to bloom. In an hour we go ashore, walk up several hundred stone steps to see a Buddhist temple. We enter the quaint garden inside the dragon wall, going thru the moon door; the pathways are mosaic designs of dragons, stars, fish and lotus, worked out with pebbles of various colors, broken brick, small stones and bits of white crockery,- the passing of centuries having mellowed the whole effect delightfully. You cannot imagine the quiet loveliness of that big, age-old temple! In a corner, all alone, was a worshipper, kneeling in front of a table with a book open before him. On one side of him was a large cuplike bell (a bell upside-down) ; on his other side was a smaller bell. The priest struck the large bell with a piece of wood, the end covered with a wad of cloth, one stroke of which made that metal cup sing with reverberations for five minutes. While this one was singing, he struck the smaller one, then his own voice rose in rich tones, chanting the words slowly and in perfect harmony with big and little bell cups. As we went down the valley we could hear the nn+sic of the temple for a long distance. Thru the valley we walked for five miles, coming out to a sea wall, thousands of years old, and 150 miles long. Again we climbed the hills to get a view of villages, trees, temples, arches and mountains across the river—it looked like the Bay of Naples away back in old China. 11

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huge horns, lowered; no movement except the chewing- of his cud. The size of the grave mound varies, depending upon the number of wives. One of the Emperors had 500 wives, who were compelled to be buried with him; it made quite a mountain. Now flashes by a camel-back bridge over a canal and often across the fiat fields looms up a large red sail. You strain your eyes to catch the least glimpse of this, for you are certain it is sailing right across the grain. Then come the mulberry orchards, first an isolated one, then more and more, until on each side of the railway are groves of them, with men and women gathering leaves in large baskets. Two baskets are slung at each end of a bamboo pole and carried thus to the hungry silk worms in the sheds, whose eating sounds like a rushing wind. These orchards are finely cultivated between the ro .vs and planted with soy or buckwheat. The low trees are often shorn entirely of leaves. Now I see some fields, from which thp first crop of grain has been harvested, and fresh seed just planted. It is easy to know that seed has been put in. for there are the marks of the bare feet that have trod it in; myriads of toot prints up and down, back and forth, close together, one man following after the other, the first man making a normal step, the next a step behind, and so on over the entire field. No land is ever idle, rotation of crops, the muck from the canals, and human fertilization supplying plant food. For this reason we cannot ever eat celery or lettuce or any raw vegetable, the soil is so full of typhoid and dysentery germs. But for all that, we love China—it is like a verse I saw at the movie last week: Oh, take me back to Siberia, The land of measles and diphtheria. Now my attention is called to the dining table again, for the three train hands have come in to eat. The rice is served in a small, wooden tub; they order fish, pork, a dozen fried eggs and several quarts of tea. They put the rice in large bowls and pile on all the other stuff indiscriminately. The teapot is passed around to wash it down, and they drink out of the spout! This is why we carry our own teapots along. Two of the men start without waste of time to shovel the food in with chopsticks, making sucking noises above the noise of the train. One of them bows his head and returns thanks, being a Christian. In ten minutes that food has vanished and they are off. Some plain women now come in to order rice and tea, having a lunch basket with accessories. They are dressed in trousers and coat of plain black cotton cloth. An American lady gets on and sits beside me; I say to her, “how strange to see the Chinese women in trousers and the men in skirts.” “You mean,” she said, “how strange to see our men in trousers and the women in skirts,” and I think I agreed with her. The camphor tree is in bloom and the pale green, feathery bamboo bows to us in the breeze. It is worth a trip to China to see the bamboo in moonlight. You feel like Alice in Wonder- 10

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ALUMNAE NOTES Upon request the following reports were - received from the graduates of the School of Horticulture for the year 1921: Booth, Barbara, Class of 1920. “From the middle of March to Thanksgiving Day I was at Movilla Gardens, Ilaverford, Pa. My chief work was seeing that all the varieties of iris, peonies, phlox, lilacs, hemerocallis, delphiniums, climbing roses, aquilegias, oriental poppies and astilbes were correctly labeled, and their locations recorded in a card index system. I also pruned the roses, sowed and transplanted delphiniums and aquilegias, filled orders, cultivated the rare varieties of iris, helped select the iris, peony and poppy blooms for exhibition in the Main Line Flower Shows of the Penns lvania Horticultural Society, cultivated a collection of rock plants.’’ Broadbent, Marjorie W., Class of 1920. “I have been fitting myself as .landscape architect and gardener at Lowthorpe School, hoping to finish here in June, with a position in view. This is a splendid place to continue horticultural studies and to equip as landscape architect after completing the two } ears’ course at Ambler.” Carter, Louise, Class of 1916. In charge of work upon the estate of Mrs. Clement Griscom, at Tallahasse, Fla. Dorothy and Katharine Cloud, Class of 1916. “The work of the past season was filled with varied and interesting experiences. It was our third year in business for ourselves as consulting horticulturists and landscape gardeners. The actual work we had last year consisted in the supervision of large country places, where we had entire charge of directing all the work and placing the orders. This comprised: Planning the flower and vegetable gardens, outlining the daily work for the gardeners, overlooking the lawns, shrubbery, greenhouses, gardens and general upkeep of the place. In some cases where the head gardener as competent, our services were required to supervise only the flower gardens and shrubbery borders. This branch of our business, together with our consultation work, always continues throughout the season. Our landscape work comes with a rush during the planting seasons. The greatest number of calls in this line were for making, and doing over, gardens and perennial borders.” Cohen, Katharine, Class of 1917. “My news is not particularly entertaining, being again this year merely an account of my activities here at Cornell. This is my third year in the School of Landscape Art, but, in our department, they count a professional landscape architect's career as necessitating some eight years of college, office work and travel before he or she can hang out a shingle. So I don’t feel very far on my way yet, though I do expect to undertake jobs of my own long before the expiration of those eight ear of training, and largely shall I attribute any premature capabilities to my good practical training at Ambler, and to the outside work 12