2 
Old Time Gardens 
They were not to become hunters and rovers, not 
to be eager to explore quickly the vast wilds beyond ; 
they were to settle down in the most domestic of 
lives, as tillers of the soil, as makers of gardens. 
What must that sweet air from the land have been 
to the sea-weary Puritan women on shipboard, laden 
to them with its promise of a garden ! for I doubt 
not every woman bore with her across seas some 
little package of seeds and bulbs from her English 
home garden, and perhaps a tiny slip or plant of 
some endeared flower ; watered each day, I fear, 
with many tears, as well as from the surprisingly 
scant water supply which we know was on board 
that ship. 
And there also came flying to the Arbella as to 
the Ark, a Dove — a bird of promise — and soon 
'the ship came to anchor. 
“With hearts revived in conceit new Lands and Trees they spy. 
Scenting the Caedars and Sweet Fern from heat’s reflection dry,” 
wrote one colonist of that arrival, in his Good Newes 
from New England. I like to think that Sweet 
Fern, the characteristic wild perfume of New Eng- 
land, was wafted out to greet them. And then all 
went on shore in the sunshine of that ineffable time 
and season, — a New England day in June, — and 
they “ gathered store of fine strawberries,” just as 
their Salem friends had on a June day on the pre- 
ceding year gathered strawberries and “sweet Single 
Roses” so resembling the English Eglantine that the 
hearts of the women must have ached within them 
with fresh homesickness. And ere long all had 
