flat flower beds. Now, while I find our taste in bedding and petti- 
coats much more delightful, I miss ourselves in our garden pictures. 
Do we only see our gardens from windows or verandahs? Do we 
never play tennis where we must seek stray balls among the mignon- 
ette? Do we never sit on those benches to read and write and make up 
accounts (the only way accounts can be made up with any com- 
fort)? No, I do not mean sitting in a prickly rose-pergola through 
which passers-by may curiously view "the lady sitting down out 
of doors." Nor sunning ourselves on those pretty stone benches 
without backs, which are so impossible for more than momentary 
occupation. I think of a refuge in a sheltered corner where, with 
table and bench, one can read, write, sew or meditate, to the sounds 
of falling water and the voices of the air. Luncheon shall be shared 
with the little wren from the apple-tree and an occasional bold 
grackle — who really requires a party of ten comrades to make him 
venturesome. 
Many trials are needed before one is able to do any real work in 
the open air, with the distractions of sky and sounds and posies, and 
I am almost sure that most of us have not acquired concentration 
enough to do it — at least I should imagine so from the unoccupied 
air of most of these "Beautiful Gardens." I know I have been led 
by its dulcet voice to a gentle wall fountain, only to find that I might 
not sit and listen to it unless, like the little birds, I could perch on the 
Hydrangea bushes. And, all the while, its tinkle, tinkle, and soft 
rush of flooding water were so sweet; a voice of the inarticulate 
world. 
Why could we not have our outdoor rooms, if we must use that 
expression of boundaries where we speak of a habitable place? Un- 
der the wall and hanging roof of an old stone smoke-house there is a 
little brick floor looking out on a modest garden; before it a Linden 
tree cuts off the western sun, until it is time to dress for dinner. Only 
lately I stored inside the rude bench and table which made it available 
for work and rest in warm summer days, or even in the leafless days 
when "The slim Narcissus takes the rain." There one might hide 
from the neighborhood business, and alternately dig and hoe and 
write and sew; there one might eat bread and cream cheese, watch 
the birds and the sky, and swing Eastward with the world. There, 
at night, the stars voyage out over the sea of heaven, perfume blows 
gently on the moist air, hawk moths come with silent whirlwinds of 
rapid flight, restless families rustle overhead, and an occasional night- 
hawk whoops down the air slope, like a boy sliding down Observatory 
Hill. 
