CHAPTER IV 



THE OLD-FASHIONED GARDEN 



VOLUNTARY exiles in a wild land, whether for con- 

 science's sake, like the Puritans and Huguenots, or for 

 the bettering of their earthly fortunes, like the Virgin- 

 ians and the Dutch, all the early colonists seem to have brought 

 with them the love of gardens so characteristic of the people of the 

 Old World. Little packages of seed must have been tucked away 

 among the few indispensables brought over by the Pilgrims in 

 the hold of the Mayflower. 



It is good to think of the homesick, lonely and overworked 

 women on the stern New England coast comforting themselves 

 with patches of herbs and flowers. The latter might have been 

 concessions to sentiment, but surely simples were a necessity in 

 a primitive settlement where the good wife had to rely solely upon 

 them in concocting doses for every ill that flesh is heir to. She 

 felt compelled to keep an apothecary shop in her own door yard 

 and follow George Herbert's quaint advice to impecunious parsons: 

 "Know what herbs may be used instead of drugs of the same 

 nature ... for household medicines are both more easy for 

 the parson's purse, and more familiar for all men's bodies. . . . 

 As for spices, he doth not only prefer home-bred things before 

 them, but condemns them for vanities, and so shuts them out of 

 his family, esteeming that there is no spice comparable for herbs 

 to Rosemary, Thyme and savory Mints, and for seeds to Fennel 

 and Caraway. Accordingly, for salves, his wife seeks not the 

 city but prefers her gardens and fields before all outlandish gums/' 



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