396 
Old Time Gardens 
tality to offer a roasted peacock to visitors. But, 
save when roasted, the vain creatures would not 
keep silence, and when they squawked the glory 
of their plumage was forgotten. They had an 
odious habit, too, of wandering off to distant groves 
on the farm, usually selecting the nights of bitterest 
cold, and roosting in some very high tree, in some 
very inaccessible spot. They could not be left in 
this ill-considered sleeping-place, else they would 
all freeze to death ; and words fail to tell the labor 
in lowering twilight and temperature of discovering 
their retreat, the dislodging, capturing, and imprison- 
ing them. 
In Narragansett there is a charming old farm 
garden, which I often visit to note and admire its 
old-time blossoms. This garden has a guardian, who 
haunts the garden walks as did the terrace peacock 
of old England ; no watch-dog ever was so faithful, 
and none half so acute. When I visit the garden I 
always ask “ Where is Job ? ” I am answered that 
he is in the field with the cattle. Sometimes this is 
true, but at other times Job has left the field and is 
attending to his assumed duties. As he is not en- 
couraged, he has learned great slyness and dissimu- 
lation. Immovable, and in silence, Job is concealed 
behind a Syringa hedge or in a Lilac ambush, and as 
you stroll peacefully and unwittingly down the paths, 
sniffing the honeyed sweetness of the dense edging 
of Sweet Alyssum, all is as balmy as the blossoms. 
But stoop for an instant, to gather some leaves of 
Sweet Basil or Sweet Brier, or to collect a dozen 
seed-pods of that specially delicate Sweet Pea, and 
