THE CITY YARD 



den, to be sure, and suggest the tea-cup times of 

 cup and hood, as they are suggested in old family 

 silver, four-posted beds and wax candles. Where 

 formalism is admitted, I own to an enjoyment of 

 hedges and borders that are clipped down to a 

 definite height and show vertical sides. They 

 go with smooth-shaven lawns and flower-beds of 

 geometric outline. But pray stop there. Don't 

 distort your poor cedar, yew, privet, box or 

 Osage orange Into a crowing cock, a rampant 

 bear, or an heraldic dragon. Don't deceive your- 

 self into supposing that you commend the tree 

 when you ask your friends to admire It. You 

 are merely requesting praise for your own mis- 

 placed cleverness, and one of these days the So- 

 ciety for the Prevention of Cruelty to Trees may 

 hear about you. There may be an occasion for 

 trimming a tree Into a cube, a cylinder, a column, 

 a globe, an umbrella, or a cone, though I can't 

 Imagine it, and In these shapes we see, reduced 

 to precision, some forms that trees will hint at 

 on their own initiative; but a tree never willingly 

 posed as a likeness of a giraffe, or a gentleman in 

 a cocked hat, or a corkscrew, or a decanter, and 

 it Is an outrage on vegetable dignity to ask It. 

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