66 Old Time Gardens 



Salem houses and gardens are like Salem people. 

 Salem houses present to you a serene and dignified 

 front, gracious yet reserved, not thrusting forward 

 their choicest treasures to the eyes of passing stran- 

 gers ; but behind the walls of the houses, enclosed 

 from public view, lie cherished gardens, full of the 

 beauty of life. Such, in their kind, are Salem folk. 



I know no more speaking, though silent, criticism 

 than those old Salem gardens afford upon the mod- 

 ern fashion in American towns of pulling down walls 

 and fences, removing the boundaries of lawns, and 

 living in full view of every passer-by, in a public 

 grassy park. It is pleasant, I suppose, for the passer- 

 by ; but homes are not made for passers-by. Old 

 Salem gardens lie behind the house, out of sight — 

 you have to hunt for them. They are terraced down 

 if they stretch to the water-side ; they are enclosed 

 with hedges, and set behind high vine-covered fences, 

 and low out-buildings; and planted around with great 

 trees : thus they give to each family that secluded 

 centring of family lite which is the very essence and 

 being of a home. I sat through a June afternoon 

 in a Salem garden whose gate is within a stone's 

 throw of a great theatre, but a few hundred feet from 

 lines of electric cars and a busy street of trade, scarce 

 farther from lines of active steam cars, and with a 

 great power house for a close neighbor. Yet we 

 were as secluded, as embowered in vines and trees, 

 with beehives and rabbit hutches and chicken coops 

 for happy children at the garden's end, as truly in 

 beautiful privacy, as if in the midst of a hundred 

 acres. Could the sense of sound be as sheltered 



