&quot;ESCAPED FROM OLD GARDENS&quot; 109 



bush of it another! Ah! it was a hedge, a 

 box hedge! Here were the great stone steps 

 leading up to the gate, and here the old, square 

 capped fence-posts, once trim and white, now 

 sunken and silver-gray. The rest of the fence 

 was lying among the grasses and goldenrod, 

 but the box still lived, dead at the top, its leaf 

 less branches matted into a hoary gray tangle, 

 but springing up from below in crisp green 

 sprays, lustrous and fragrant as ever, and 

 richly suggestive of the past that produced it. 

 For the box implies not merely human life, 

 but human life on a certain scale: leisurely, 

 decorous, well-considered. It implies faith in 

 an established order and an assured future. A 

 beautiful box hedge is not planned for im 

 mediate enjoyment; it is built up inch by 

 inch through the years, a legacy to one s heirs. 

 Beside the gate-posts stood what must once 

 have been two pillars of box. As I passed be 

 tween them my feet felt beneath the matted 

 weeds of many seasons the broad stones of the 

 old flagged walk that led up through the gar 

 den to the house. Following it, I found, not 

 the house, but the wide stone blocks of the old 

 doorsteps, and beyond these, a ruin gray 



