THE LURE OF THE GARDEN 



to the house, embracing it with vines and sheltering it 

 with flowering shrubs, to spread out as time and occasion 

 served and the needs of the family increased. With 

 the Puritans utility went hand in hand with beauty in 

 the garden, and the box-hedged beds that grew savory 

 or sweet herbs, small fruits or simples, looked quite as 

 lovely to the gardener as the hollyhocks and primroses 

 imported from England. Tomatoes, under the name 

 of love-apples, were kept in the decorative portions and 

 trained on ornamental trellises, being thought poisonous, 

 while the southern wall was used as in England to 

 ripen quinces and apricots against. 



It was the old-fashioned posies, many of them new 

 enough then, that were planted in beds and borders: 

 gillyflower, love-lies-bleeding, snapdragon, purple 

 loosestrife, guelder-roses, heartsease, foxglove, lady's- 

 slipper, eglantine or sweetbrier, since run wild over 

 the country. Roots of sweet violet were carefully 

 carried all the long way from England, as was ivy and 

 honeysuckle. They flourished famously in the new 

 soil, disputing with the narrow paths their right of ex- 

 istence, rejoicing in color and sweet odors, speaking in 

 each healthy bloom and twining tendril of love, of care 

 and gentle humoring. 



The Faiths, Phoebes, Patiences, and Contents, for 

 the names of the women were as quaint as those of 

 their flowers, most of whom had faced perils and bitter 

 hardship for an ideal, had strongly individual charac- 



22 



