THE PLACE AND THE PROSPECT 11 



new possibility when their branches were cased in 

 crystal, for no fruiting could more completely 

 justify their existence. 



And the great old sycamore showed greater 

 with the snow about it than it had when leaves 

 instead carpeted the ground. Those days indeed 

 gave me the prospect of the growing garden, while 

 they showed me the loveliness of the snow garden 

 that came into bloom in a night. The open space 

 about — ^how it stirred me! I would — and did — 

 shout for the joy of it all, and no one looked on me 

 as insane; while had I raised my voice half so loud 

 in rejoicing on the twenty-foot lot of my street- 

 front home, some astonished neighbor might prop- 

 erly have telephoned for a policeman, or set on 

 foot rumors of doubt as to my Hfe-long abstinence 

 from alcohol. 



So I face this January the garden prospect. The 

 items are as they have been above set down, but 

 may be here summarized as including perhaps 

 twenty fine trees, some hundreds of feet of old 

 arborvitse hedges, some scores of ancient grape- 

 vines, some half-dozen great old Hlacs, some slopes 

 of weedy land, a flat expanse of raw and seemingly 

 barren shale. The incidental detriments of broken- 

 down outbuildings, and the interloping bushes 

 and misplaced trees that had prospered during 



