INTRODUCTION 



those who work in gardens and love them become 

 intimate through those common possessions of the 

 soil, the sky, the trees and the flowers. And so, 

 without apology, I shall be intimate and personal 

 in speaking of this manuscript which, between the 

 lines at least, is a record of a family amidst a gar- 

 den a record, you may think, of a garden, but to 

 me a record of the living of five people in a garden 

 Mother, Hope, Eleanor, Father and Loring. 

 You may say that Hope, the oldest, raised the tiger 

 lilies, the melons, the sweet peas, the gladioli the 

 pictures show it this way but I am about to differ 

 with you, for it was clearly they who raised Hope 

 and Eleanor and Loring. The flowers and fruit 

 and vegetables taught them and I know them 

 to reverence God, to understand not perhaps the 

 mystery of life itself, but rather to know that there 

 is a wonderful mystery; to revere themselves and 

 their physical functions because they know plant 

 life and its functions; to live happily and health- 

 fully in the great out-of-doors ; to work steadily and 

 patiently for the distant end from seeding to har- 

 vesting; to understand intimately through experi- 

 ence a great law the law of cause and effect; to 

 feel themselves a part of the great work-a-day 



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