THE CHARM OF GARDENS 



" Fight it out/* said the robin. 



More or less in silence, and really in excellent tempers, 

 we finished the trench that was to receive the cinders 

 and ashes. 



I washed the tiles. There were exactly ninety of them 

 required. I started to wash them in the cold water 

 of a stable bucket, and I regarded each one as a thing 

 of beauty as I did it. After having done forty I began 

 to think it would be a good thing to give prisoners to do to 

 teach them discipline. After seventy, I decided to recom- 

 mend that particular form of torture to some Chinese 

 official. By the time I had finished I felt that some 

 medal should be struck to commemorate the event. 



The gardener, at the close of that day, looked at my 

 heap of tiles. 



I said, " I have finished them." 



He replied, " I was just coming to lend a hand." 



To which, as I was not going to let the sun go down 

 upon my wrath, I answered, " Thank you." 



I think an ash-heap is the most desolate object I 

 know. The dreary remains of burnt-out fires make a 

 melancholy sight, but I remember that as a child that 

 corner of the garden where stood the heaps of ashes 

 and ancient rubbish was as the mines of Eldorado to 

 me. Here, if one dug deeply enough, one found pieces 

 of broken pottery, in themselves equal, by power of 

 imagination, to any discovery of Roman remains. To 

 the whitened bones I found I gave names, building 

 from them adventures more lurid than those of Captain 

 Kydd. To the ashes I gave gold and jewels, delving 

 as if in a mine, sifting, with childlike seriousness, the 

 heap of fire slack, and coming on some bright bit of 

 glass that shone for me like a kingly diamond, I held it 

 to the light and renewed the ardour of my soul in its 

 gleaming rays. After all, are not pieces of broken glass 



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