THE SUNKEN GARDEN 299 



rectangular style. These beds please the eye of 

 the mistress, and of her friends, too, if they are 

 candid in their remarks, which I doubt. 



While excavating the garden we found a 

 granite boulder shaped somewhat like an egg 

 and nearly five feet long. It was a big thing, 

 and not very shapely ; but it came from the soil, 

 and Polly wanted it for the base of her sun-dial. 

 We placed it, big end down, in the mathematical 

 centre of the garden (I insisted on that), and sunk 

 it into the ground to make it solid ; then a stone 

 mason fashioned a flat space on the top to ac- 

 commodate an old brass dial that Polly had found 

 in Boston. The dial is not half bad. From the 

 heavy, octagonal brass base rises a slender quill 

 to cast its shadow on the figured circle, while 

 around this circle old English characters ask, 

 " Am I not wise, who note only bright hours ? " 

 A plat of sod surrounds the dial, and Polly goes 

 to it at least once a day to set her watch by the 

 shadow of the quill, though I have told her a 

 hundred times that it is seventeen minutes off 

 standard time. I am convinced that this estima- 

 ble lady wilfully ignores conventional time and 

 marks her cycles by such divisions as " catalogue 

 time," " seed-buying time," " planting time," 

 sprouting time," spraying time," " flowering 

 time," " seed-gathering time," " mulching time," 

 and " dreary time," until the catalogues come 

 again. I know it seemed no time at all until 

 she had let me in to the tune of $687 for the 



