THE LURE OF THE GARDEN 
their beauty and sweet smell, he left their care to his 
wife. 
In a corner there is a certain old white rose-bush that 
tradition, in the voice of the caretaker, informs you is 
the identical one beside which lovely Eleanor Custis 
plighted troth with Lawrence Lewis, the preux cavalier 
of his day. Nor were these lovers the last to find hap¬ 
piness beside the fair bush. For tradition goes on to 
say that ever since the rose has proved a fatal spot for 
man and maid, and that many a happy pair first found 
courage to ask and to answer the great question as they 
paused to look at its burden of bloom. To-day, no 
more than in sweet Nellie’s youth, can lovers resist the 
persuasion of the white rose-bush. Possibly some po¬ 
tent spell lingers in the perfume of its flowers, or the 
spirits of lovers now dead set other hearts to beating 
where theirs beat before. At all events, any couple who 
dread the chains of matrimony will do well to avoid the 
old bush, harmless and sweet as it appears to the eye 
in all the bravery of its June blossoming. 
One likes to imagine that this bush was planted by 
Washington and his wife some wet spring morning, 
when the earliest-come birds were twittering on the bud¬ 
ding boughs: planted with laughter and much argu¬ 
ment as to just where it would look best, and finally 
set in its place by those strong hands behind whose 
capable power lay a heart not less warm with human 
love than noble with sublime faith in ultimate human 
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