WINTER MEETING AT LEBANON. 245 



cities, who do not make the most of the little strip of yard, with a peach 

 tree in its corner, a grape-vine on its walls and roses everywhere ; 

 while the man in the country, where all things are possible, who does 

 not care for a garden, is something to be looked at and looked over, 

 that one may see what is the matter with him — for something is. All 

 the women in the country, at any rate, want a garden. In spite of all 

 drawbacks, these garden-loving women never give up their gardens, 

 and year after year the larkspur spindles there, the bluebells and the 

 columbine grow more pale, and the little deep blue Star of Bethlehem 

 opens as if it were the cachet with which every garden should be signed 

 and sealed, in memory of that spot of the east where not only the first 

 gardens grew, but the gardens most sacred of all. 



Flowers and gardens have always played a great part in all our 

 dramas and romances. In "Romeo and Juliet" you see the heavy-headed 

 flowers hanging in the moonlight : much of the action of "Twelfth night" 

 goes on in Olivia's garden, of "Much ado about nothing" in Leonato's 

 garden ; and we have a Venetian garden in the "Merchant of Venice," 

 and lessons in Sicilian gardening in the "Winter's tale." What one 

 poet did, all the others did ; and the novel of modern days would be 

 missing its opportunity to make much of the luxury of life that did not 

 give us a garden scene. For a garden is the out-door home, where na- 

 ture makes roofs and walls, hangings and pictures, where sunshine and 

 birds and flowers are not guests, but members of the family. 



One always thinks of a garden as being peopled by lovers, by plea- 

 sant gray-haired people sitting in its shades, by happy children with 

 their pets and plays ; we are only too sure that there are few things 

 better in life than the possession and cultivation of a garden. 



How beautiful are the traditions and history of each and every 

 flower of the garden. Let us take for instance her most favored, "the 

 rose." 



As, in music, grace notes become blended with the leading melody, 

 sustaining and embellishing it through infinite variations, so, inwrought 

 with rose history are legends fancified as fairy lore; traditions rich in 

 rare imagery ; romance in which love and war wage chivalrous defense 

 of white or crimson emblem. Dark were the world without mythical 

 light, even as to color. 



The Romans regarded the rose as the emblem of silence as well as 

 of love and joy, and frequently represented Cupid offering one to Har- 

 pocrates, the God of Silence ; and on festive occasions suspended a rose 

 over the table, intimating to the assembled guests that the conversa- 

 tion was to be literally, as well as metaphorically, "under the rose." 



