the summer clover is,
Where each year the mower searches
For the nests of wild-bee honey,
All along these silver birches
Stand up straight in shining row,
Dewdrops sparkling, shadows darkling,
In the early morning glow;
And in gleaming time they're gleaming
White, like angels when I'm dreaming_.

_There among its handsome brothers
Was one little crooked tree,
Different from all the others,
Just as bent as bent could be.
First it crawl'd along the heather
Till it turn'd up straight again,
Then it drew itself together
Like a tender thing in pain;
Scarce a single green leaf straggled
From its twigs so bare and draggled--
And it really looks ashamed
When I'm passing by that way,
Just as if it tried to say--
"Please don't look at such a maim'd
Little Cripple-Dick as I;
Look at all the rest about,
Look at them and pass me by,
I'm so crooked, do not flout me,
Kindly turn your head awry;
Of what use is my poor gnarl'd
Body in this lovely world?_"

Once I wrote[10] about two little, boys who played together all through
the heats of the Dry Summer in a garden very beautiful and old. The tale
told how it came to pass that one of the boys was lame, and also why
they loved one another so greatly.

[Footnote 10: Jiminy and Jaikie (_The Stickit Minister_).]

Now, it happened that some loved what was told, and perhaps even more
that which was not told, but only hinted. For that is the secret of
being loved--not to tell all. At least, from over-seas there came
letters one, two, and three, asking to be told what these two did in the
beautiful garden of Long Ago, what they played at, where they went, and
what the dry summer heats had to do with it all.

Perhaps it is a foolish thing to try to write down in words that which
was at once so little and so dear. Yet, because I love the garden and
the boys, I must, for my own pleasure, tell of them once again.

It was Jiminy's garden, or at least his father's, which is the same
thing, or even better. For his father lived in a gloomy study with
severe books, bound in divinity calf, all about him; and was no more
conscious of the existence of the beautiful garden than if it had been
the Desert of Sahara.

On the other hand, Jiminy never opened a book that summer except when he
could not help it, which was once a day, when his father instructed him
in the Latin verb.

The old garden was cut into squares by no