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Show RAISES GARDEN FOR RED CROSS BENEFIT SEATTLE, Wash., Dee. 8. Could Ezra Meeker, the pioneer who lias, driven hie ox team back to the national capital over the old Oregon trail, have slipped some of his eighty-seven years from his stooped shoulders, he would have been a private at least in the great American army. This being impossible, however, he harked back to the days when men lived by the toil of their hands, and raised a war garden on an acre and a third of ground east of Lake Washington. Washing-ton. Just the other day the veteran walked in:o the Red Cross rooms and laid down j 52.i 7. SO, representing the sum lie had realized re-alized from his toil. "It was a duty and therefore a pleasure," pleas-ure," he said simply. "And I do not think anyone should take credit for doing what he considers a duly." "Private" Meeker disdained the modern mod-ern tractor, and even the horse, for cultivating cul-tivating his ground. He waged war on the weeds with a hoe.. Eight. tons of fertilizer, fer-tilizer, donated by a packing firm, enriched en-riched the ground. A citizen paid the cost of bringing water to the land for irrigation. ir-rigation. Two Red Cross women marketed mar-keted the produce. At one end of the garden appeared this sign: "This garden- is dedicated to the de-t de-t fenders of liberty." It was "Private" .Meeker's answerto the Hun. |