THE LURE OF THE GARDEN 
yet been sufficiently considered, a fact as clearly proved 
by the usual suburban garden as by anything else. For 
an expanse of ground planted with flowering shrubs and 
merging unmarked into the adjoining plot, to continue 
indefinitely from house to house, may be charming to 
look upon but a garden it is not; any more than the 
marble arcade of a down-town skyscraper open to the 
general public is a home. 
The real garden must be protected from the passer-by; 
must have hedge or wall, must exclude what does not 
“belong,” or cease to exist. It must be a place beyond 
whose confines the weary world may go hang. It must 
spell intimacy, and its full secret be known only to the 
chosen; be a privilege shared, rather than a possession 
displayed. The garden is not the place for a “crush,” 
for a fashionable reception, for a function, but for actual 
happiness, real hospitality, and affectionate comrade¬ 
ship; that social intercourse, in fact, which yields en¬ 
joyment, not weariness. 
In any histoire intime of the days when the agreeable 
assemblage of mutually pleasing persons was a fine art, 
the garden plays its part. Infinite care and art were 
expended to make these outdoor rooms enchanting, and 
in arranging them so as to create a mingled sense of 
possible solitude with the constant potentiality of charm¬ 
ing companionship. A history of social life is to a large 
extent a history of gardens, reflecting as they do to a 
remarkable degree the characteristics of the society that 
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