162 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES 



sons forth to adventure on the seven seas while 

 they waited and wove love and longing into the 

 beds of garden bloom. The modern city has 

 crowded these for long, yet the atmosphere 

 of their brave beauty remains still and be- 

 longs with the square, patrician dignity of the 

 houses. 



In one of these gardens I glimpsed an oriole, 

 flashing his tropic colors along the branches of a 

 magnolia, now just in its wonder of white bloom. 

 It was as if white patience of mother love had 

 waited him there, a gay young wanderer from 

 Surinam, where, very likely, he had spent the win- 

 ter on an annual voyage. Gay and restless he was, 

 and his mellow voice prattled no doubt of all the 

 strange sights he had seen and the adventures he 

 had met, while the fair tree enfolded him in her 

 arms and worshiped him with the tender home 

 perfume of mother love. It made me wonder a 

 little, too, why Hawthorne missed the orioles in 

 the Salem gardens which he must have seen each 

 spring, and only birds of such somber colors flitted 

 through the flowers of his fancy. But after all it 

 was only one more proof that out of the inner eye 



