34° Old Time Gardens 



Gooseberry bushes. I seldom see Gooseberry 

 bushes nowadays in any gardens, whether on farms 

 or in nurseries ; they seem to be an antiquated fruit. 



I have in my memory many other customs of 

 childhood in the garden ; some of them I have told 

 in my book Child Life in Colonial Days, and there 

 are scores more which I have not recounted, but 

 most of them were peculiar to my own fanciful 

 childhood, and I will not recount them here. 



One of the most exquisite of Mrs. Browning's 

 poems is The Lost Bower ; it is endeared to me be- 

 cause it expresses so fully a childish bereavement 

 of my own, for I have a lost garden. Somewhere, 

 in my childhood, I saw this beautiful garden, filled 

 with radiant blossoms, rich with fruit and berries, 

 set with beehives, rabbit hutches, and a dove cote, 

 and enclosed about with hedges ; and through it 

 ran a purling brook — a thing I ever longed for in 

 my home garden. All one happy summer after- 

 noon I played in it, and gathered from its beds and 

 borders at will — and I have never seen it since. 

 When I was still a child I used to ask to return to 

 it, but no one seemed to understand ; and when I 

 was grown I asked where it was, describing it in 

 every detail, and the only answer was that it was 

 a dream, I had never seen and played in such a 

 garden. This lost garden has become to me an 

 emblem, as was the lost bower to Mrs. Browning, 

 of the losses of life ; but I did not lose all ; while 

 memory lasts I shall ever possess the happiness of 

 my childhood passed in our home garden. 



