OUR SENTIMENTAL GARDEN 



hook on to others, bitter, regretful, or let it be even merely 



ruffling . . . inevitable chain of responsible experiences ! 



Our early memories are like works of art : they have 

 a way of perpetuating in beauty things that perhaps were 

 not really beautiful in themselves, About them there is 

 an unconscious selection which, having been made by 

 a mind still essentially serene, has contrived a subtle 

 harmony of all the elements. Upon the pictures of its 

 store, a child's memory lays an emphasis strangely 

 different to that which the critical powers of later growth 

 would set. And it is this quaint insistence on certain 

 " odd corners of things " which <among other reasons) makes 

 them so dearly personal and private to the older mind. 

 In my own case, as I have said, they belong to a world 

 still more remote than the childhood of most men of 

 " Grandpa " status a world which has not even the link 

 of language to connect it with the present ! 

 Paradoxically, this is perhaps the reason why I take so 

 much pleasure in finding these happy-hued and odorous 

 things now rising, and living under their right English 

 names, in a garden of my own. To the other denizens of 

 Villino Loki they are part of the excellent general company 

 foregathering in our garden : but to me they are in many 

 ways my intimates. We seem "to have known things 

 together " / things doubtless of no importance, but pleasant 

 to recall in casual intercourse. 



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