OUR BACK YARDS. 



5 



mized, the householder — striving only for effect — 

 thinks that the back windows will never be noticed. 

 So all things conspire to render the region of back 

 yards as ugly and depressing a landscape as could 

 well be devised. 



Fit tenant and presiding genius of this gloomy 

 scene, the gaunt and hungry "alley cat" stalks 

 from yard to yard over the wooden highways so 

 kindly provided for his use, with an air of dark cyni- 

 cism which such surroundings could not fail to en- 

 gender, like an incarnate agent of that power which 

 delights in all ugliness, material and spiritual. To 

 him alone is the region congenial ; to the lover of 

 "sweetness and light " it is saddening in the extreme. 

 Tell me, ye whose lot Fate has cast in our populous 

 cities, has not the picture at least an air of verisimil- 

 itude ? Is it not familiar ? 



Here is a field for mission work where each may 

 labor in propria persona, and not by hireling proxies 

 as in Ashantee and Timbuctoo. This land of dark- 

 ness lies at your own doors, where each may judge 

 of the need and of the means of reformation. If 

 beauty be a means of grace (and who can doubt it ?), 

 then it must follow that the converse is true, and that 

 to live with such an outlook from our windows tends 

 lower and bruteward. 



Yet it is not only because of its effect on our char- 

 acters, but as an indication of our characters, that 

 such a state of affairs is deplorable. Why do we 

 beautify and adorn our houses and our persons ? 

 Because we love beauty and cleanliness for itself, 

 or to impress others with our wealth or our good 

 taste ? If you, Mr. Dirty-back-yard, were to be cast 

 away, like Robinson Crusoe, on a desert island, 

 would you. cease washing your face because, for- 

 sooth, there were no neigh- 

 bors there to note whether 

 it were clean o r dirty ? 

 Your neglect of the rear of 



your premises, which are so carefully cared for in 

 front, is defensible on no other ground. 



What is to be done to make so unfavorable a wil- 

 derness to blossom as the rose ? I admit and am 

 conscious of the difficulties and limitations of the 

 situation. Society has not yet reached that millennial 

 state wherein communism in back yards will be a 

 feasibility, so that the board fence, or some substi- 

 tute therefore, must abide with us to vex our eyes. 

 The rich, perhaps, may replace it with brick walls, 

 which lend themselves more readily to the beautify- 

 ing efforts of the amateur gardener, but to the mod- 

 erately circumstanced and to the "decently poor," 

 the only hope is in disguise. 



Again, lines full of flopping clothes of varied hues 

 are not only blots upon the fairest landscapes, but 

 the heroic foot of Bridget the Hibernian, or Dido 

 the Ethiop, is unfavorable to the development of 

 tender vegetation. These flies are in the amber 

 and must be suffered to remain. We must not ex- 

 pect complete success, but only qualified failure. But 

 a dollar or two (n-^t necessarily more), expended in 

 lu'rdy roses, vines or shrubs, added to a little intelli- 

 gent labor — without which money is always useless — 

 will suffice to con\'ert your 20x50 feet of dreary, cat- 

 haunted waste into the same extent of blooming 

 cheerful garden ; to smother your unbearable board 

 fences under a wealth of climbing roses, clematis, 

 honeysuckle or what you will, to the great improve- 

 ment of your own health and spirits, your better 

 standing as a man and a citizen, and, as one garden 

 infects a whole block, setting an example which your 

 neighbors will be quick to follow, as ever}' real mis- 

 sionary, whether he be lay or clerical, is bound in 

 honor to do. 



Concerning some efforts toward the amelioration 

 of my own back yard in a certain capital city, the 

 Editor requests me to give an account in these pages 

 next month. P. R. Stansbury. 



Hc'i e folhiw so>iie sketc/ws in tlie aullini 's Back } 'a> d. 



