A GARDEN DIARY 235 
tered no yachts, nursed no wounded, sung no 
war songs, or even—lowest of all the efforts of 
patriotism—so much as composed any! Who 
have remained at home the whole time; tending 
your own gardens, culling your own fancies, and 
sorrowing over your own sorrows. What right 
have such as, you—idlers, cumberers, that you 
are!—so much as to mention the word ‘ war” 
at all? 
“Very true,” the other self answers submis- 
sively. And yet again, he reflects, as he looks 
around him, is it not, after all, just such little 
plots as these that the earthquake of battle has 
this year shaken the most fiercely? Is it not 
such gardens as these—not this one perhaps, 
but others almost identical ; flowery places, where 
the robins peck about, and where no hostile foot 
has ever trod—is it not against these that the 
harshest blows have been struck, where the 
cruellest wounds have been received? Quick, 
quick, as in a dream, fancy conjures up a vision 
—a procession, rather—floating along upon the 
soft bands of autumn sunshine; a procession of 
mothers, of sisters, of betrothed ones, of wives. 
As each in turn passes by memory evokes the 
face, or the faces, that belong to it; then turns 
to linger last and longest with the mothers. Ah, 
those mothers! God’s pity, above all others, rest 
this year with the mothers. For whom hope can 
never be anything again but a delusive word ; for 
