94 A WHITE-PAPER GARDEN 



man with equal care and carelessness, into 

 her keeping. 



In Maytime the best gardens are not gar- 

 dens, but are orchards, and orchards to be the 

 best orchards are apple orchards. Orange 

 and lemon groves are very beautiful, but they 

 are too newly come among us and are too 

 local to touch the common heart. One must 

 have a certain peculiar training to care for 

 rows of peach-trees, and it would, I think, 

 be impossible to enter into very intimate rela- 

 tions with them in spite of the exceeding 

 loveliness of their short flowering time. 

 Cherries and pears and plums are charming in 

 their virginal purity, but it is to old apple-trees 

 that thought flies with unerring instinct and 

 directness when one thinks of an orchard. 



I thank the tiny brain-cells in which the 

 greater part of my earthly possessions are 

 kept, that they hold so close and so fast so 

 many orchard pictures that it does not much 

 matter where Time and Chance lead my body, 

 since I can go back when I will to the 



old familiar places and see This is what 



I see. 



A place without limit, because the eyes 



