62 
THE GARDENERS' CHRONICLE OF AMERICA. 
measure of the enthusiasm which gripped us during the 
ensuing days. The blizzard kept me from my office for 
three of them, all suburban traffic being by the ears. 
True to my promisee, I measured the line from the cor- 
ner of the dining room bay window to the southeastern 
boundary stone ; the snow was only six feet deep in 
places and I had to guess where the boundary 
stone lay; but, at that, my report was measurably 
correct, I am sure. Genevieve set me to the read- 
ing of "Philosophy of the Formal Garden'" with the 
Tudor landscaping as a side line, while she did the really 
important work of plotting our property down to the last 
inch of overtonal capacity. How the hours sped ! In 
my mind's eye I saw The Crags as it would emerge 
triumphantly from the chrysalis of the snow, and com- 
pared this vision with the pitiful, yet heart-warming fire 
escape farming at the Hallorhan Arms. Yes, there 
where the gravelled drive led up to the garage (There 
wasn't a garage ; but, naturally, when I purchased that 
made-over Blick from Ransom — ) there along the drive 
would be a stately row of Lombardy poplars. And by 
the Crag, where our estate fell into a little swale, a 
lotus pond, of course, with fan-tailed Japanese goldfish 
and, mayhap, a tadpole disporting themselves under the 
shadow of the green pads. Then, between the Crag 
and the chevaux-de-frise of spikenard along the eastern 
boundary, why — a Tudor bower. Unquestionably a 
bower! Bowers are not common in Kittypussy. 
The wife was not so sure about the bower business. 
"The Gardening Art of England Under the Tudors" 
threw its weight of authority for the bower; but "Horti- 
culture in Lombardy" and "Philosophy of the Formal 
Garden" were all for a pergola. Genevieve showed me 
a picture of a pergola in the Lombardy book — mighty 
fetching, with grape clusters hanging down from the 
roof and a lady in a Roman gown reaching up to pluck 
one of the lucious bunches. But, as I argued, Genevieve 
would not be likely to affect the Roman gown, and neither 
of us was partial to grapes, anyway. We compromised 
the matter. She yielded the Tudor bower while I bowed 
to her ban on the Japanese lotus pond. She said that, 
judging from our experience during the autumn rains, 
anv fishpond we might project should naturally be laid 
in the cellar ; we could raise a family of Mammoth Cave 
fish there any time. 
"But I tell you what would be dreadfully artistic, 
Cedric," she supplemented. "A Japanese rest-house on 
the Crag — one of the?e cute little things of bamboo with 
a thatched roof. The view of the lake from the rest- 
house would be simply gorgeous ! Sort of a teahouse of 
the Thousand Steps, such as the book says they have in 
Yokohama : only, of course, there wouldn't be a thou- 
sand steps up to this one. Three or four would do — 
just cut out of the rock." 
"But, dear girl," I expostulated, "you wouldn't ex- 
actly call it a rest-house, would you ? Nobody but your 
Uncle Dabney would actually need a rest after climbing 
four steps up a rock and you said just the other day his 
rheumatism was on the mend. Besides, the Company 
says they left the Crag standing because it's too hard 
to blast. Cutting even four steps " 
"Cedric, your prosaic lawyer's mind is perfectly im- 
possible at times," my helpmate interrupted ; but the rest- 
house idea went into the discard. 
The Crag, however, remained a veritable Gibraltar 
of obstinacv in the path of our plotting. Genevieve 
pawed the tables of aesthetic logarithms in vain; no co- 
efficient of rocks, or of rocky treatments, was there. To 
be sure, the Crag could reasonably come under the gen- 
eric head, "Natural Obtructions," as set forth in chapter 
XVIII of the "Philosophy." The dictum there was, 
"Remove all natural obstructions that cannot be bent to 
the uses of decoration"; the engineer of the Company 
assured me that if he removed (by extra heavy dyna- 
mite) our Crag a large section of the villa would be re- 
moved simultaneously. It was not until by happy chance 
I pounced upon "Le Traitment des Roches" in a second- 
hand bookstall on Ann street, New York, that our prob- 
lem was solved. M. Bienville de Toquemont, who wrote 
this work in the latter half of the XVIII century, was 
a genius. He offered fifty-seven varieties of expedients 
in situations just like ours. The one we finally agreed 
to adopt was to build an extension of the villa around 
the rock — a sun parlor, through the floor of which the 
pinnacle of our name giver would project to form a nat- 
ural background for a Winter garden of ferns and palms. 
When I approached the Company engineer to get an 
estimate on the cost of such an extension he, being a 
very quick-witted fellow, said that in future he would 
strive to build all his houses around a sun parlor rock. 
"The de Toquement type villa will hit 'em between the 
eyes !" he declared with enthusiasm. 
By the time the last snow was gone Genevieve and I 
had our half acre entirely plotted. She had worked out 
the variations of our landscaping liet-motif right down 
to the last blade of grass and the ultimate spear of 
asparagus. 
The Van Saltynes, our neighbors who were to be 
hedged off by the chevaux-de-frise of spikenard, are 
quite the most aristocratic and wealthiest folk in Kitty- 
pussy. They winter at Palm Beach or in Cairo while 
we humbler citizens fight drifts and pay coal bills. They 
have — or had, to be strictly truthful — the finest and most 
extensive gardens and lawns in the community ; the 
Company added an extra thousand on the price of The 
Crags because of its proximity to this exclusive beauty, 
and I paid it without a murmur, appreciating the aesthe- 
tic and commercial value of the environs. In this Spring 
of our vaulting ambitions the Van Saltynes, not yet re- 
turned from the South, sent a French landscape poet out 
to direct their man-of-all-work in the revamping of the 
entire estate. Naturally Genevieve and I were burning 
with curiosity to see the imported artist at his work. 
Each night when I came up from the train my wife met 
me with a bulletin of the progress on our neighbor's 
grounds — "He's certainly putting in a Louis Quinze 
sunken garden there by the clothes poles," or, "I'm sure 
he is fixing a jungle garden about the fountain." 
So it went for a week. On a Friday night, when I 
came home, Genevieve met me with little gurgles of ex- 
citement. 
"Oh, Cedric ! The Professor is a perfect darling. He 
saw me watching him today, came over and with the 
most delightful naivete gave me these wonderful bulbs 
of the Congo sleeping lily. Said there weren't a dozen 
plants in this country outside of the Smithsonian Insti- 
tute and told me how to plant them." 
The dear girl brought out from the pocket of her 
apron five wispy little white bulbs. Something about 
their appearance was vaguely reminiscent ; I knew that 
somewhere I had encountered this part of a Congo sleep- 
ing lily. When she told me I must take them to the cel- 
lar and hang them on a string in a dark place I fulfilled 
the first clause of instructions. Went to the cellar with 
the precious bulbs, cut one in half with the hatchet and, 
selah ! the mystery was solved. Garlic ! 
Saying not a word to my partner, I came home from 
the office the next day at noon and behind the curtain in 
my study secretlv watched the actions of the Professor 
and the Van Saltyne's man-of-all-work. Exhilarated : 
that's the word to describe them. Exhilarated and full 
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