POINTS TO PONDER LVIII

From Reader's Digest

Contributed by Leo Aikman, Atlanta columnist, quoting a man who remembered a 1907 environmental cleanup in Brooklyn:

   Our family of eight had a nice plot with a vegetable garden bordered by lilac bushes. A tenement in back of us was populated with folks who used to throw their trash - old shoes and socks, an assortment of things - into our garden. My older brothers and I thought that these people - they weren't called polluters then - should be told off.
   Mother, who had never got beyond grammar school in the Old Country, and who had never heard of "psychology," told us to go out and pick lilacs. Then, she directed us to give each of the dozen families in back a bouquet, and say our mother thought they might enjoy them.
   Somehow, a miracle happened. No more pollution.