160 OLD-FASHIONED GARDENING 
need—and, literally, it means something which the 
users of it never actually intend. 
We have of course a certainty, when the words fall 
on our ears, of generally pleasant attributes in the 
thing to which we hear them applied. Hence they are 
the cue for a rapturous response, either oral or facial— 
lest we seem unappreciative—followed usually by 
amiable generalities calculated to preserve the mental 
fog. Someone says, “Such a nice old-fashioned 
house! All funny little windows”; or “Such a fine 
old-fashioned garden! All boxwood”; and we are all 
immediately charged with a pleasant complacence, in 
which little windows and boxwood drift about, un¬ 
attached to anything except an attenuated mental con¬ 
cept that is without form and void. 
If this sort of thing is not to go on indefinitely, we 
must reduce the term “old-fashioned” to something 
akin to certainty. The literal meaning is of course 
a fashion that is “old, obsolete or antiquated”— 
with absolute disregard of whether it was charming 
or ugly; but by some curious philological twist, an 
associated meaning has grown up around this, which 
almost hides it; a meaning that insists upon beauty 
as a primary property, and that resents the implied 
reproach of either “obsolete” or “antiquated.” Of 
course no house or garden or anything else that was 
described as obsolete in fashion would win a word 
