36 
Old Time Gardens 
border ; and there were vines of Convolvulus and 
Honeysuckle. It was a garden overhung by clouds 
of perfume from Thyme, Lavender, Sweet Peas, 
Pleasant-eyed Pink, and Stock. The garden’s mis- 
tress looked well after her household ; ample store 
of savory pot herbs grow among the finer blossoms. 
It was a garden for children to play in. I can see 
them ; little boys with their hair tied in queues, in 
knee breeches and flapped coats like their stately 
fathers, running races down the garden path, as did 
the Van Cortlandt children ; and demure little girls 
in caps and sacques and aprons, sitting in cubby 
houses under the Lilac bushes. I know what flowers 
they played with and how they played, for they were 
my great-grandmothers and grandfathers, and they 
played exactly what I did, and sang what I did when 
I was a child in a garden. And suddenly my picture 
expands, as a glow of patriotic interest thrills me in 
the thought that in this garden were sheltered and 
amused the boys of one hundred and forty years 
ago, who became the heroes of our American Revo- 
lution ; and the girls who were Daughters of Lib- 
erty, who spun and wove and knit for their soldiers, 
and drank heroically their miserable Liberty tea. I 
fear the garden faded when bitter war scourged 
the land, when the women turned from their flower 
beds to the plough and the field, since their brothers 
and husbands were on the frontier. 
But when that winter of gloom to our country 
and darkness to the garden was ended, the flowers 
bloomed still more brightly, and to the cheerful seed- 
lings of the old garden is now given perpetual youth 
