ver failed to remark, was fit
to frighten every war-ship down in Hamoaze. The trees, grey with lichen,
sprawl as they have fallen under the weight of past crops. They go on
blossoming, year after year; even those that lie almost horizontally
remember their due season and burst into blowth, pouring (as it were) in
rosy-white cascades down the slope and through the rank grasses.
But as often as not the tenant neglects to gather the fruit. Nor is it
worth his while to grub up the old roots; for you cannot plant a new
orchard where an old one has decayed. One of these days (he tells me) he
means to do something with the wisht old place: meanwhile I doubt if he
sets foot in it once a year.

For me, I find it worth visiting at least twice a year: in spring when the
Poet's Narcissus flowers in great clumps under the north hedge, and the
columbines grow breast-high--pink, blue, and blood-red; and again in
autumn, for the sake of an apple which we call the gillyflower--small and
shy, but of incomparable flavour--and for a gentle melancholy which haunts
the spot like--yes, like a human face, and with faint companionable smiles
and murmurs of dead-and-gone laughter.

The tenant was right: it was a wisht old place, and the more wisht because
it lies so near to a world that has forgotten it. Above, if you row past
the bend of the creek, you will come upon trim villas with well-kept
gardens; below, and beyond the entrance to the creek, you look down a
broad river to the Hamoaze, crowded with torpedo-boats, powder-hulks,
training-ships, and great vessels of war. Around and behind
Merry-Garden--for that is its name--stretches a parish given up to the
cultivation of fruit and flowers; and across the creek another parish
'clothed'--I quote the local historian--'in flowers like a bride'; and
both parishes learned their prosperity from Merry-Garden the now deserted.
In mazzard time ('mazzards' are sweet black cherries) the sound of young
laughter floats across Merry-Garden; but the girls and boys who make the
laughter seldom, wander that way. No longer to its quay come boats with
holiday-parties from the Fleet and the Garrison at Plymouth, as they came
by scores a hundred years ago.

In those days Merry-Garden was a cherry-garden. The cottage was faced
with a verandah overlooking the tide. In the wide stone chimney-place,
where now, standing knee-deep in nettles, you may look up and see blue sky
beyond the starlings' nests, as m