A Moonlight Garden 
419 
livelier green of Elm and Maple and Birch ; gray 
farm-houses with vast barns ; little towns of thrifty 
white houses clustered around slender church-spires 
which, set thickly over this sunny land, point every- 
where to heaven, and tell, as if speaking, the story 
of New England's past, of her foundation on love of 
God, just as the fields and orchards and highways 
speak of thrift and honesty and hard labor; and 
the houses, such as this of Indian Hill, of kindly 
neighborliness and substantial comfort ; and as this 
old garden speaks of a love of the beautiful, a refine- 
ment, an aesthetic and tender side of New England 
character which we know, but into which — as Mr. 
Underwood says in Quabbin, that fine study of 
New England life — “ strangers and Kiplings cannot 
enter." 
Seven hundred feet of double flower border, four- 
teen hundred feet of flower bed, twelve feet wide! 
“ It do swallow no end of plants," says the gar- 
dener." 
In spite of the banishing dictum of many artists 
in regard to white flowers in a garden, the presence 
of ample variety of white flowers is to me the 
greatest factor in producing harmony and beauty 
both by night and day. White seems to be as 
important a foil in some cases as green. It may 
sometimes be given to the garden in other ways 
than through flower blossoms, by white marble 
statues, vases, pedestals, seats. 
We all like the approval of our own thoughts by 
men of genius; with my love of white flowers I had 
infinite gratification in these words of Walter Savage 
