THE LURE OF THE GARDEN 
varying occupations of days and seasons in her diary. 
The wine-press at work, herbs gathered and dried, “a 
busy morning in my Still-Room,” where cordials and 
waters were distilled or expressed, the planting of this 
and that, particularly the making of that famous aspara¬ 
gus bed, which she watched from a camp-stool under a 
willow, carrying an umbrella and wearing galoshes, 
“for it was wet after last night’s downpour.” 
In the South a different mode of life evolved another 
sort of garden. Gardens more like the great old English 
places, but more glowing, more luxuriant. The work 
was done by hosts of slaves, and room and money and 
inherited luxury were the rule rather than the excep¬ 
tion. The accumulated taste of generations sought its 
expression in these southern gardens, and a touch of 
stateliness marks them. Much thought and study was 
given to laying them out, and landscape artists were 
brought from abroad to assist in designing them. 
Coldstream Plantation, in South Carolina, is an ideal 
garden of this kind, and remains almost perfectly what 
it was, improved and enriched by its century of green 
security. A wonderful repose lies like a holy spell upon 
the place, a blessed sense of peace belonging both to 
house and grounds. The house brings to mind the line 
of the old poet, 
May I a small house and large garden have, 
for small and simple it is compared with its garden, 
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