A GARDEN was wonderful at night — a place of 
strange silences and yet stranger sound: trees 
darkly guarding mysterious paths that ran into 
caverns of darkness; the scents of flowers rising from 
damp earth heavy with dew; flowers that were weary 
with the dust and noise of the day and slept gently, 
gratefully, with their heads drooping to the soil, their 
petals closed by the tender hands of the spirits of the 
garden. The night sounds were strangely musical. Cries 
that were discordant in the day mingled now with the 
running of distant water, the last notes of some bird 
before it slept, the measured harmony of a far-away 
bell, the gentle rustle of some arrival in the thickets; 
the voice that could not be heard in the noisy chatter 
of the day rose softly now in a little song of the night 
and the dark trees and the silver firelight of the stars.” 
— Hugh Walpole. 
