A CITY GARDEN 189 



and steam trolleys. Round by the quiet of the north 

 side, more distinctively called " the Churchyard," we 

 can, without magic aid, forget a while the call of the 

 City. With a book on a sun-smitten seat the junior 

 clerk or the young lady from the fur-house can spend 

 a better lunch hour than the most sybaritic of 

 employers. The sparrows are the waiters, little birds 

 of a far deeper brown than at the farm where we were 

 born, and of infinitely greater trust in human kind- 

 ness. In London the sparrow has to be skylark, 

 nightingale, flycatcher. Throw a. crumb into the air 

 and see him flutter up and take it as neatly as a 

 swallow does a fly. Having thrown the last crumb, 

 hear him chirrup his grace after meat Wait a little 

 and see Philip, at almost any month in the year, strut 

 his wings upon the ground and become rigid under 

 the influence of the grand passion. Yet it is left for 

 the artists of Japan to do justice to this most valiant 

 of birds. 



An archer could have sent his shaft from old 

 St. Paul's towards Aldersgate Street, and let it fall 

 into a far quieter garden, the then burial-ground of 

 St. Botolph, now known as the Postmen's Park. 

 Here in 'the midst of the noiseless industry of the 

 parcels-office is peace indeed. The fountain in the 

 middle has goldfish, of course, but it has more than 

 that. A young man leans over and looks hard into 

 its shadows, then tosses his head with a tiny air of 

 something solved. He has identified the gloomier 

 forms of a couple of dace, possibly the remnants of 

 some pike-fishing expedition that a postman has put 

 there. In this pond also are many of the really wild 

 water-weeds. Water-plantain rears its dainty inflores- 



