8 NATURE IN A CITY YARD 



they are left to do a little healthy rough- 

 ing it. 



It took an appalling amount of toil to 

 soften the yard into shape for agriculture. 

 We discovered, after moving, that the whole 

 block stood on " made land " which had 

 been dumped into a hollow. But " land " 

 is a relative term. Oh, yes ; there is some 

 sand and there are some pebbles and some 

 rocks in the soil; but its richness and charm 

 are in effete hardware, bed-springs, ashes, 

 bottles, bones, oyster-shells, decayed wood, 

 hoop-skirts, bird-cages, silk dresses, china 

 in fact, I do not think of many familiar 

 objects that we have not extracted from our 

 yard in spading up the flower-beds. We 

 took up, at a depth of hardly more than a 

 foot, a set of false teeth. (Archaeologists 

 to whom we showed these relics thought 

 that they did not belong to the Indians.) 

 At another time I extracted a piece of 

 glass with a lovely soap-bubble effect on its 

 surface, like that on the old tear-bottles and 

 ointment-jars of Cyprus. It was not a tear- 

 bottle, I think it had held a grief too 

 strong for tears when it was whole, but 



