eedom of perspective is one of our great liberties.

Oh, say, can you _see_--?

I made this change, of course, on the side nearest the straight,
property-division bound, where ran an invisible wire fence. Thus the bed
on that side was set between two straight parallels, while the bed on
the lawn side remained between waving parallels. This gave the best
simplicity with the least artificiality. And thus the two lanes are
open to view from end to end, yet each has two deep bays on the side
nearest the lawn, bays which remain unseen till one actually reaches
them in traversing the lane. In such a bay one should always have, I
think, some floral revelation of special charm worthy of the seclusion
and the surprise. But this thought is only one of a hundred that tell me
my garden is not a finished thing. To its true lover a garden never is.

Another sort of bay, the sort resulting from a swift retreat of a line
of shrubberies pursued by the lawn and then swinging round and returning
upon the lawn in a counter pursuit, I thought I had learned from books
and Miss Bullard and had established on my own acre, until I saw the
college gardens of Oxford, England, and the landscape work in Hyde Park,
London. On my return thence I made haste to give my own garden's
in-and-out curves twice the boldness they had had. And doubling their
boldness I doubled their beauty. "Don't" ever let your acre's, or half
or quarter acre's, ground lines relax into feebleness or shrink into
pettiness. "Don't" ever plan a layout for whose free swing your
limits are cramped.

[Illustration: "The lane is open to view from end to end. It has two
deep bays on the side nearest the lawn."

The straight line of high growth conceals in the midst of its foliage a
wire division fence, and makes a perfect background for blooming
herbaceous perennials.]

"Don't" ever, if you can help it, says another of my old mistakes to me,
let your acre lead your guest to any point which can be departed from
only by retracing one's steps. Such necessities involve a lapse--not to
say collapse--of interest, which makes for dulness and loss of dignity.
Lack what my own acre may, I have it now so that by its alleys, lawns
and contour paths in garden and grove we can walk and walk through every
part of it without once meeting our own tracks, and that is not all
because of the pleasant fact that the walks, where not turfed, are
covered with pine-straw, of which each new September