8 COMMON SENSE GARDENS 



stead was built near the road, as it generally was 

 for convenience sake, three or four trees whose 

 genus varied with the section of country, but which 

 were generally either White Pines, Maples or Elms, 

 were planted for their shade in a row just outside 

 or just inside the front fence. There on the turf 

 that grew fine and velvety beneath their rustling 

 leaves the inevitable rocking-chair was placed, 

 and the women of the family rocked and read and 

 sewed whenever their manifold duties would per- 

 mit. These trees were the only formal notes of 

 horticulture to be seen in the otherwise natural 

 landscape; and their formality grew into stateli- 

 ness year after year, generation after generation, 

 until to-day they stand glorious monuments to the 

 long dead hands that nursed them through their 

 uncertain infancy, and placed them as pleasant 

 punctuation points on the dusty highway. 



Perhaps it was thus that the parlour fell into 

 disrepute, for in Winter it was too cold to be in- 

 habited; the door was kept tightly closed and 

 locked. It was left to the dust and damp that in 

 our minds are always associated with it, never dis- 

 turbed except on those three momentous occasions 



