396 Old Time Gardens 



tality to offer a roasted peacock to visitors. But, 

 save when roasted, the vain creatures would not 

 keep silence, and when they squawked the glory 

 of their plumage was forgotten. They had an 

 odious habit, too, of wandering off to distant groves 

 on the farm, usually selecting the nights of bitterest 

 cold, and roosting in some very high tree, in some 

 very inaccessible spot. They could not be left in 

 this ill-considered sleeping-place, else they would 

 all freeze to death ; and words fail to tell the labor 

 in lowering twilight and temperature of cjjscovering 

 their retreat, the dislodging, capturing, and imprison- 

 ing them. 



In Narragansett there is a charming old farm 

 garden, which I often visit to note and admire its 

 old-time blossoms. This garden has a guardian, who 

 haunts the garden walks as did the terrace peacock 

 of old England ; no watch-dog ever was so faithful, 

 and none half so acute. When I visit the garden I 

 always ask " Where is Job ? " I am answered that 

 he is in the field with the cattle. Sometimes this is 

 true, but at other times Job has left the field and is 

 attending to his assumed duties. As he is not en- 

 couraged, he has learned great slyness and dissimu- 

 lation. Immovable, and in silence, Job is concealed 

 behind a Syringa hedge or in a Lilac ambush, and as 

 you stroll peacefully and unwittingly down the paths, 

 sniffing the honeyed sweetness of the dense edging 

 of Sweet Alyssum, all is as balmy as the blossoms. 

 But stoop for an instant, to gather some leaves of 

 Sweet Basil or Sweet Brier, or to collect a dozen 

 seed-pods of that specially delicate Sweet Pea, and 



