OUR GRANDMOTHER’S GARDENS 
both flowers and vegetables, but it is smaller now, and 
the vegetables have been banished. The ponds are 
connected by a riotous brook, reached by way of a 
broad walk bordered with rows of brilliant annuals on 
either side, and almost entirely overarched at one time 
by superb shrubbery, since dead. The path ends just 
where the brook escapes from the first pond in sprayey 
falls, and there an arbor buried in honeysuckle and 
guelder-roses shelters seats for the weary or the idle. 
The square terraces step downward from the house, 
divided into many beds by box-bordered paths. In 
the great-grandmother’s time, there was in one corner 
the garden of herbs, and a huge asparagus bed, a new 
thing then, as well as many vines bearing white or pur¬ 
ple grapes, from which wine was made during the fall 
days. Some of the old flowers still linger in the bor¬ 
ders, such as valerian, marvel-of-Peru, and moss-pinks. 
But where the asparagus grew the daffodils and jon¬ 
quils nowadays spread a carpet of gold. The solid, fine 
nobility of the house and grounds, their effect of space 
and permanence, and old-world, courteous bearing re¬ 
main unchanged, however; are, indeed, accentuated by 
the lapse of time. 
Along the paths, wearing a great leghorn hat on her 
high-piled hair, and in a gown of brilliant flowered 
chintz, walked the great-grandmother, then a young 
bride, superintending the work of servants and slaves, 
keeping careful watch on everything, and noting the 
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