THE EARLY IDEALS 
233 
sensitive of things. Indeed I cannot express, without 
laying myself open to the charge of wild and senti¬ 
mental exaggeration, even a small degree of this su¬ 
perlative garden “feeling.” 
And moreover, a garden will not be deceived, neither 
will it lie! Coax, elude and delude ourselves as we 
may, the naked truth will out there, in the end, to con¬ 
fuse us. No assumed attitude ever tricks it or catches 
it unawares; but rather will it fool us, and lay bare 
our little mummeries when we are least prepared. 
So beware of ever undertaking anything in the garden 
without an honest intention. It will never succeed. 
But be assured that with an honest intention, many 
imperfections in knowledge and even in taste, will be 
indulgently passed over and somehow mysteriously 
adjusted by the strange little garden folk that dwell 
out under the skies, some ever looking up at them in 
bright comprehension, others with tender faces turned 
down to the good earth. 
To be honest in making an old-fashioned garden 
then, and so to be successful, we must literally become 
“old-fashioned”—in our garden thinking at least. 
We must retrace two hundred or a hundred and fifty 
years or so, and put ourselves back there as definitely 
and actually as it is possible to do. We must find 
out, in this way, what the old thoughts about the gar¬ 
den were, what the old ideals, the old conceptions. 
