heath-like leaves, and broke their alabaster boxes of
perfume on the feet of spring, the most careless passer-by was forced
to stay his steps for one ecstatic moment to look and to breathe, to
forget and to remember. The shadow of the owner's house lay on this
garden at the morning hour, and a tall brick building intercepted its
share of the afternoon sunshine; but the love and care of the wrinkled
old woman who tended it took the place of real sunshine, and
everything planted here grew with a luxuriance not seen in sunnier and
more favored spots. The mistress of the garden, when questioned as to
this, would say it was because she gave her flowers to all who asked,
and the God of gardens loved the cheerful giver and blessed her with
an abundance of bud and blossom. The highest philosophy of human life
she used in her management of this little plant world; for, burying
the weeds at the roots of the flowers, the evil was made to minister
to the good; and the nettle, the plantain and all their kind were
transmuted by nature's fine chemistry into pinks, lilies, and roses.

The purple splendor of the wisteria recalls the garden that I always
entered with a fearful joy, for here a French gardener reigned
absolute, and the flowers might be looked at, but not pulled. How
different from those wild gardens of the neighboring woods where we
children roamed at will, shouting rapturously over the finding of a
bed of scentless blue violets or delicate anemones that withered and
were thrown away before we reached home,--an allegory, alas! of our
later lives.

There was one garden that I coveted in those days as Ahab coveted his
neighbor's vineyard. After many years, so many that my childish
longing was almost forgotten, I had it, I and my children. Together we
played under the bee-haunted lindens, and looked at the sunset through
the scarlet and yellow leaves of the sugar maples, and I learned that
"every desire is the prophecy of its own fulfilment;" and if the
fulfilment is long delayed, it is only that it may be richer and
deeper when it does come.

All these were gardens of the South; but before childhood was over I
watched the quick, luxuriant growth of flowers through the brief
summer of a northern clime. The Canterbury-bell, so like a prim,
pretty maiden, the dahlia, that stately dame always in court costume
of gorgeous velvet, remind me of those well-kept beds where not a leaf
or flower was allowed to grow awry; and in one