84 THE JOY OF GARDENS 



elbows in twenty-five-foot lots, when the open country 

 stretches free all around, and there might have been 

 space for orchards and gardens'? Will there not be a 

 great awakening for builders of that kind some day, 

 when they see the error of their ways 2 



The thought gathered like a dark cloud blown across 

 a clear sky, and vanished before a whiff of fragrant rose- 

 mary rising from the blossoming branches which a slim 

 little woman in black, who had just entered the car, had 

 knotted in the corner of her handkerchief and was now 

 pressing against her cheek. The atmosphere was re- 

 freshed, and the landscape seemed to unveil another 

 garden where the pungent smell of box trees arose from 

 an inclosing hedge of glossy dark foliage, where myrtle 

 covered a terrace which sloped down to an herb garden 

 with its company of sweet-scented plants. 



"Who loves his garden still keeps his Eden" for him 

 paradise is regained very truly, as love is a generous re- 

 vealer, bestowing a precious gift of insight ; and the lover 

 of gardens may conjure them from the past or plant 

 them wherever an ounce of earth takes hold in a crannied 

 wall. 



As the car sped on, the city smoke had settled on the 

 distant horizon and the summer fields were making 

 nature's gardens. It is wild-rose time, garlanding the 

 prairies and forgotten byways; the spiderwort in in- 

 imitable purple set among leaves of silvered green is 



