36 Old Time Gardens 



border ; and there were vines of Convolvulus and 

 Honeysuckle. It was a garden overhung by clouds 

 of perfume from Thyme, Lavender, Sweet Peas, 

 Pleasant-eyed Pink, and Stock. The garden's mis- 

 tress looked well after her household ; ample store 

 of savory pot herbs grow among the finer blossoms. 



It was a garden for children to play in. I can see 

 them ; little boys with their hair tied in queues, in 

 knee breeches and flapped coats like their stately 

 fathers, running races down the garden path, as did 

 the Van Cortlandt children ; and demure little girls 

 in caps and sacques and aprons, sitting in cubby 

 houses under the Lilac bushes. I know what flowers 

 they played with and how they played, for they were 

 my great-grandmothers and grandfathers, and they 

 played exactly what I did, and sang what I did when 

 I was a child in a garden. And suddenly my picture 

 expands, as a glow of patriotic interest thrills me in 

 the thought that in this garden were sheltered and 

 amused the boys of one hundred and forty years 

 ago, who became the heroes of our American Revo- 

 lution ; and the girls who were Daughters of Lib- 

 erty, who spun and wove and knit for their soldiers, 

 and drank heroically their miserable Liberty tea. I 

 fear the garden faded when bitter war scourged 

 the land, when the women turned from their flower 

 beds to the plough and the field, since their brothers 

 and husbands were on the frontier. 



But when that winter of gloom to our country 

 and darkness to the garden was ended, the flowers 

 bloomed still more brightly, and to the cheerful seed- 

 lings of the old garden is now given perpetual youth 



