GARDENS OF SWEET SCENT 



if not altogether reserved for this hour, when it is 

 sent forth as a call to their insect lovers. I feel it 

 unfortunate that I have never been able to see the 

 wraith of a garden, although in moonlit hours I have 

 scanned many a one very closely. 



But apart from this regrettable withdrawing of 

 the ghost from my sight, I have entered gardens that 

 have at once impressed me as places of sentiment 

 and wondrously sweet scents; other gardens have 

 charmed me by their perfection, even though they 

 have evoked no especial feeling nor even fostered a 

 distinct remembrance of them. Why this difference, 

 I cannot tell. One thing, however, I know. A garden 

 of sentiment should never be exposed to the gaze of 

 the passer-by. And if its lines of planting are not at 

 some points especially high, fairly soaring skyward, 

 this impression of enclosed sentiment is lessened. 

 The garden must in places appear as if shut in from 

 the rest of the world, and from too much atmosphere, 

 as well as from people. A garden laid flatly out 

 under the burning sun gives a free escape to senti- 

 ment. 



When I passed by the famous box of Sylvester 

 Manor at Shelter Island, box which has witnessed the 

 coming and the passing of ten generations, and which 

 has participated in the joys of each, since on wedding 

 ceremonials it is strewn, even to a recent day, with 

 golden oak leaves, and when I went on beyond the 

 Madonna lilies and entered the garden proper, I knew 

 that I had reached a place of preeminent sentiment. 

 It was a garden not seen at a glance, for I found later 



[263] 



