1 Old Time Gardens 



They were not to become hunters and rovers, not 

 to be eager to explore quickly the vast wilds beyond ; 

 they were to settle down in the most domestic of 

 lives, as tillers of the soil, as makers of gardens. 



What must that sweet air from the land have been 

 to the sea-weary Puritan women on shipboard, laden 

 to them with its promise of a garden ! for I doubt 

 not every woman bore with her across seas some 

 little package of seeds and bulbs from her English 

 home garden, and perhaps a tiny slip or plant of 

 some endeared flower ; watered each dav, I fear, 

 with many tears, as well as from the surprisingly 

 scant water supply which we know was on board 

 that ship. 



And there also came flying to the Arbella as to 

 the Ark, a Dove — a bird of promise — and soon 

 the ship came to anchor. 



"With hearts revived in conceit new Lands and Trees they spy, 

 Scenting the Caedars and Sweet Fern from heat's reflection dry," 



wrote one colonist of that arrival, in his Good Newes 

 from New England. I like to think that Sweet 

 Fern, the characteristic wild perfume of New Eng- 

 land, was wafted out to greet them. And then all 

 went on shore in the sunshine of that ineffable time 

 and season, — a New England day in June, — and 

 they " gathered store of fine strawberries," just as 

 their Salem friends had on a June day on the pre- 

 ceding year gathered strawberries and "sweet Single 

 Roses" so resembling the English Eglantine that the 

 hearts of the women must have ached within them 

 with fresh homesickness! And ere long all had 



