Garden Boundaries 
401 
of ledge and field into splendid stone walls. Their 
beauty is a gift to the farmer’s descendants in reward 
for his hours of bitter and wearying toil. One of 
these fine stone walls, six feet in height, has stood 
secure and unbroken through a century of upheavals 
of winter frosts — which it was too broad and firmly 
built to heed. It stretches from the Post Road in 
old Narragansett, through field and meadow, and by 
the side of the oak grove, to the very edge of the 
bay. To the waterside one afternoon in June there 
strolled, a few years ago, a beautiful young girl and 
a somewhat conscious but determined young man. 
They seated themselves on the stone wall under the 
flickering shadow of a great Locust tree, then in full 
bloom. The air was sweet with the honeyed fragrance 
of the lovely pendent clusters of bloom, and bird and 
bee and butterfly hovered around, — it was paradise. 
The beauty and fitness of the scene so stimulated the 
young man’s fancy to thoughts and words of love that 
he soon burst forth to his companion in an impas- 
sioned avowal of his desire to make her his wife. 
He had often pictured to himself that some time he 
would say to her these words, and he had seen also 
in his hopes the looks of tender affection with which 
she would reply. What was his amazement to be- 
hold that, instead of blushes and tender glances, his 
words of love were met by an apparently frenzied 
stare of horror and disgust, that seemed to pierce 
through him, as his beloved one sprung at one 
bound from her seat by his side on the high stone 
wall, and ran away at full speed, screaming out, “Oh, 
kill him ! kill him ! ” 
2D 
