AN INCIPIENT GARDEN 
#415 I have related, the indiscriminate spotting of the 
&3| lawn with flower beds big, little, long, round and 
) square continued during several seasons, and I 
4 look upon it as the Dark Ages, during which flori- 
culture made no progress. I wearied of the narrow limitations 
imposed by a few shrubs. I hungered for flowers and color, 
though each new experience convinced me of the wisdom of 
confining myself to durable nasturtiums, marigolds, and 
ever more nasturtiums—they being the only flowers that 
survived the droughts that yearly doomed us. That sin- 
gle wizened aster decided me that asters were not for me, 
nor cosmos, poppies, cornflowers and many other hard- 
ridden favorites. 
Then there came a pause in a peculiarly severe winter that 
housed us for months, that piled the snow almost to the tops of 
certain windows, a winter which cut one off from all past ex- 
periences and left him like a new-born babe, open to new in- 
fluences. At first when the wind roared down the chimneys, 
and rattled our doors and windows, and made merry with 
drifting the snow still higher toward the eaves, I took refuge 
in the atlas. Thumbed were the pages bearing the maps of 
semi-tropical countries; worn were the margins where pink 
and yellow sun-kissed islands bask in turquoise seas. I was 
on intimate terms with a hundred sheltered nooks in many 
climes, and all open to a southern exposure. Adam confided 
to me that he hoped by another winter that we could go to the 
Equator where he meant to have a house right on the Line, 
it 
