66 
Old Time Gardens 
Salem houses and gardens are like Salem people. 
Salem houses present to you a serene and dignified 
front, gracious yet reserved, not thrusting forward 
their choicest treasures to the eyes of passing stran- 
gers ; but behind the walls of the houses, enclosed 
from public view, lie cherished gardens, full of the 
beauty of life. Such, in their kind, are Salem folk. 
I know no more speaking, though silent, criticism 
than those old Salem gardens afford upon the mod- 
ern fashion in American towns of pulling down walls 
and fences, removing the boundaries of lawns, and 
living in full view of every passer-by, in a public 
grassy park. It is pleasant, I suppose, for the passer- 
by ; but homes are not made for passers-by. Old 
Salem gardens lie behind the house, out of sight — 
you have to hunt for them. They are terraced down 
if they stretch to the water-side ; they are enclosed 
with hedges, and set behind high vine-covered fences, 
and low out-buildings; and planted around with great 
trees : thus they give to each family that secluded 
centring of family life which is the very essence and 
being of a home. I sat through a June afternoon 
in a Salem garden whose gate is within a stone’s 
throw of a great theatre, but a few hundred feet from 
lines of electric cars and a busy street of trade, scarce 
farther from lines of active steam cars, and with a 
great power house for a close neighbor. Yet we 
were as secluded, as embowered in vines and trees, 
with beehives and rabbit hutches and chicken coops 
for happy children at the garden’s end, as truly in 
beautiful privacy, as if in the midst of a hundred 
acres. Could the sense of sound be as sheltered 
