92 COME INTO THE GARDEN 



hence they do not invite to occupancy — to 

 breakfast on pleasant mornings and tea on sum- 

 mery afternoons, to steamer chair naps or a hot- 

 day forty winks on a cool swinging rush couch. 

 Magazines and books do not find their way to 

 the uncomfortable-looking table tops — and in 

 short there is no reason for idling or resting 

 because there is nothing really to idle with or 

 actually to rest on. All these things are on the 

 front porch — or indoors, out of wind and 

 weather. And because there is no such ren- 

 dezvous in the garden or at the end of the 

 garden walk, the garden itself lies alone in sun- 

 light and in moonlight, under the dew and 

 under the pale mists and the sweet, cool rain 

 — and not one thousandth part of what a gar- 

 den really is ever comes home to one of us. 



Casinos and summer houses let us have, there- 

 fore, by all means; but of the pergola, beware! 

 For pergolas, as they are so often seen and made, 

 are just another instance of our tendency indis- 

 criminately to seize upon and use — and abuse 

 — a novelty. The pergola in itself is not ob- 

 jectionable, but ignorant use has made it so, 

 and worse — made it ridiculous. Which is al- 

 ways an unfortunate state for even the most ad- 

 mirable thing to reach. 



Properly speaking the architectural pergola or 



