MIDWINTER GARDENS 



had been so many years, so many decades, 

 healed as to show that no harm had come of 

 it or would come. The soaring, dark-green, gUt- 

 tering foliage stood out against the almost per- 

 petually blue and white sky. Beyond them, a 

 few yards within the place but not in a straight 

 line, rose even higher a number of old cedars 

 similarly treated and offering a pleasing con- 

 trast to the magnoHas by the feathery texture 

 of their dense sprays and the very different cast 

 of their lack-lustre green. Overtopping all, on 

 the farther hne of the grounds, southern Hne, 

 several pecan-trees of nearly a hundred feet in 

 height, leafless, with a multitude of broad- 

 spreading boughs all high in air by natural 

 habit, gave an effect strongly like that of winter 

 elms, though much enlivened by the near com- 

 pany of the evergreen masses of cedar and 

 magnoUa. These made the upper-air half of 

 the garden, the other half being assembled be- 

 low. For the lofty trim of the wintergreen- 

 trees — the beauty of which may have been 

 learned from the palms — allowed and invited 

 another planting beneath them. Magnolias, 



195 



