JULY 149 



that flowed in from the hill country beyond, 

 there was nothing left for the trees and the 

 grass and the flowers to do but to grow. I 

 took many lectures in landscape gardening 

 that year. I learned more than one of those 

 esoteric mysteries of grouping, of selection and 

 of reclamation, which are at the root of all 

 successful planting, and I had more than one 

 lesson in the art of the harmony due to contrast. 

 Between the unkempt lawn and a rarely- 

 travelled lane there had once been a fence with 

 some pretension to elegance. I imagined this 

 from the height of the square brick pillars 

 standing in dignified decay along the border 

 line, and covered to the very crest of the stone 

 cups-and-balls they bore, with gadding vines 

 and with mosses. I never saw the fence, and 

 the ironwork of the gates was a matter of 

 guesswork. Two or three elms were left of 

 what had once been an avenue ; there were a 

 few ancient cedars in the corner where the 

 lane left the forgotten highroad, and a wilder- 

 ness of white-blossomed althea bushes crowded 

 themselves about the grey knees of the old 

 beech-tree whose dead top was overhung with 

 Virginia creepers. Four or five fountainlike 



