230 
OLD-FASHIONED GARDENING 
may best be spared for the only purpose to sport in 
them at times.” They must always have furnished 
much amusement and diversion, although curiously 
enough the paths in the old designs do not cross nor 
end blindly, and so bewilder completely, as one would 
expect them to. As a matter of fact, it would be im¬ 
possible to go astray in one, once started along its nar¬ 
row way. But it is a long walk to the centre always. 
In 1765, Henry Smith of New Amsterdam adver¬ 
tised for sale at his place on Church street, a fine col¬ 
lection of curious shells for grotto work. But I doubt 
these little monstrosities being common anywhere out¬ 
side the stiff—and often undeniably absurd—Dutch 
influence. And the fountains and water works which 
were so popular in the gardens of Europe by the mid¬ 
dle of the seventeenth century, offered problems of 
engineering as well as of finance which kept them out 
of the early gardens here. A canal such as Captain 
Goelet describes at the country seat of Edmund 
Quincy near Boston, which could be fed by a brook, 
or a pond similarly supplied, was as ambitious a use 
of water as American gardens enjoyed. And it is 
worth remarking that even to-day, fountains and cas¬ 
cades and water features generally are almost never 
seen in the greatest gardens here—and where they do 
exist they are perpetually dry! Whereas, one of the 
chiefest “antickes” of elaborate gardens in Europe and 
even in England, was a system of concealed water jets 
