MIDWINTER GARDENS 



stature is an apartment or tenement house. 

 Having felled her surrounding forests of cypress 

 and drained the swamps in which they stood, 

 she has at command an open plain capable of 

 housing a population seven times her present 

 three hundred and fifty thousand, if ever she 

 chooses to build skyward as other cities do. 



But this explains only why New Orleans 

 inight have gardens, not why she chooses to 

 have them, and has them by thousands, when 

 hundreds of other towns that have the room — 

 and the lawns — choose not to have the shrub- 

 beries, vines and flowers, or have them with- 

 out arrangement. Why should New Orleans so 

 exceptionally choose to garden, and garden 

 with such exceptional grace .'^ Her house-lots 

 are extraordinarily numerous in proportion to 

 the numbers of her people, and that is a begin- 

 ning of the explanation; but it is only a be- 

 ginning. Individually the most of those lots 

 are no roomier than lots elsewhere. Thousands 

 of them, prettily planted, are extremely small. 



The explanation lies mainly in certain pe- 

 culiar limitations, already hinted, of her — 



173 



