s of convenience, a
blessed release of countless human backs from countless hours of
crouching, sickle-shaped, over the sickle. It is not the tyrant, but
only like so many other instruments of beneficent democratic
emancipation, the tyrant's opportunity. A large part of its convenience
is expedition, and expedition is the easiest thing in the world to
become vulgarized; vulgarized it becomes haste, and haste is the tyrant.
Such arguing would sound absurdly subtle aimed against the uncloaked,
barefaced tyranny of the street-car conductor, but the tyranny of the
man with the lawn-mower is itself subtle, masked, and requires subtlety
to unmask it.

See how it operates. For so we shall be the better prepared for a
generous appreciation of those far Southern gardens whose beauty has
singled them out for our admiration. We know, of course, that the
"formal garden," by reason of its initial and continuing costliness,
is, and must remain, the garden of the wealthy few, and that the
gardening for the great democracy of our land, the kind that will make
the country at large a gardened land, is "informal," freehand,
ungeometrical gardening. In this sort, on whatever scale, whether of the
capitalist or of the cottager, the supreme feature is the lawn; the
lawn-mower puts this feature within the reach of all, and pretty nearly
every American householder has, such as it is, his bit of Eden.

But just in that happy moment the Tempter gets in. The garden's mistress
or master is beguiled to believe that one may have a garden without the
expense of a gardener and at the same time without any gardening
knowledge. The stable-boy, or the man-of-all-work, or the cook, or the
cottager himself, pushes the lawn-mower, and except for green grass, or
changeable brown and green, their bit of Eden is naked and is not
ashamed.

Or if ashamed, certain other beguilements, other masked democratic
tyrannies, entering, reassure it; bliss of publicity, contempt of
skill, and joy in machinery and machine results. An itinerant ignoramus
comes round with his own lawn-mower, the pushing of which he now makes
his sole occupation for the green half of the year, and the entire
length, breadth and thickness of whose wisdom is a wisdom not of the
lawn but only of the lawn-mower; how to keep its bearings oiled and its
knives chewing fine; and the lawn becomes staringly a factory product.

Then tyranny turns the screw again, and in the bliss of publicity and a