41 8 Old Time Gardens 



and doubtless under the influences of the beautiful 

 English flower gardens they had seen. Its length 

 was originally broken halfway up the hill and 

 crowned at the top of the hill by some formal par- 

 terres of careful design, but these now are removed. 

 There are graceful arches across the path, one of 

 Honeysuckle on the crown of the hill, from which 

 you look out perhaps into Paradise — for Indian 

 Hill in June is a very close neighbor to Paradise ; 

 it is difficult to define the boundaries between the 

 two, and to me it would be hard to choose between 

 them. 



Standing in this arch on this fair hill, you can look 

 down the long flower borders of color and per- 

 fume to the old house, lying in the heart of the trees 

 and vines and flowers. To your left is the hill-sweep, 

 bearing the splendid grove, an arboretum of great 

 native trees, planted by Major Poore, and for which 

 he received the prize awarded by his native state 

 to the finest plantation of trees within its bounds. 

 Turn from the house and garden, and look through 

 this frame of vines formed by the arch upon this 

 scene, — the loveliest to me of any on earth, — a 

 fair New England summer landscape. Fields of 

 rich corn and grain, broken at times with the gray 

 granite boulders which show what centuries of grand 

 and sturdy toil were given to make these fer- 

 tile fields ; ample orchards full of promise of fruit ; 

 placid lakes and mill-dams and narrow silvery rivers, 

 with low-lying red brick mills embowered in trees ; 

 dark forests of sombre Pine and Cedar and Oak; 

 narrow lanes and broad highways shaded with the 



