Accessories 159 



One- third of this, or four feet, is the radius of the inner edge; this 

 is increased sixteen or eighteen inches according to the width 

 of seat desired, to give the Une of the outer edge or back of the 

 bench. The table may be any size up to four feet across, and 

 allow ample room between it and the bench. It should always 

 stand on the center, and the ends of the bench should always 

 be cut on a line drawn from the center. 



Using this same circle and cutting it down so that only four 

 people may occupy the seat, it is possible to use only seven by 

 seven feet, with the table. Without the table a seat this size 

 could be put anywhere that any ordinary straight seat would go. 



Next to seats — which simply must not be omitted from any 

 garden — I rank sun-dials. These too ought never to be omitted, 

 and certainly of all garden furnishings they are, in one way, 

 the most important. It is not because they are of less conse- 

 quence than the garden seat but because they are less likely to 

 keep us out-of doors and in the garden that I have spoken of the 

 latter first. 



There is a mystery of eternity in a sun-dial, and I will venture 

 to say that no one who has dipped ever so little into dial lore, 

 or thought of dials at all, has missed the realization of it. To 

 me, however, it is not so much in the quaint old mottoes that 

 adorn the dial face and admonish the observer, nor in all the 

 beautiful lore that surrounds dials, as it is in the dial's constant 

 intimacy and familiarity with the swinging spheres in space. 

 It brings an enfolding sense of the oneness of all things in the 

 great march through eternity. 



For this reason perhaps I have no patience with the gloomy 

 dial mottoes, with the lugubrious warnings that thunder them- 

 selves at unsuspecting persons who come to this, which has been 

 so beautifully called the "garden altar," to mark the shadows 



