A Little Maryland Garden 199 
There is a little English book by Harry 
Roberts, written in the true spirit of a lover 
of gardening, and at the end he sums up his 
sentiments thus: 
From gardening I have obtained nothing but 
pleasure—the little setbacks produced by weather 
and other causes serving but to throw into 
brighter relief the floral successes which would 
otherwise be too monotonously sure. I have 
plucked this infinite amount of pleasure from 
a garden the least promising, thus showing that 
(as in every other concern) the pleasure to be 
gained is dependent more on our attitude than 
on our conditions.—I am at least convinced that 
a small garden can be made to yield fully as 
much entertainment as a large one, and much 
more than a garden which is too large for one’s 
personal management. 
Earlier in his book he produces this bit 
of philosophy: ‘‘In gardening we may escape 
from ourselves, and here, it seems to me, 
lies its very greatest value—greater even than 
its use in enabling us to escape from our 
fellows’’—reminding one of Andrew Mar- 
