Chapter VIII 
GARDENS IN LITERATURE 
T HERE are gardens that owe their sole existence 
to the pages of a book, and which you enter, 
not by unlatching a gate or following a path, but 
by the simple expedient of opening an attractive volume 
and traveling along lines of print. Gardens, these, that 
are free to every one, and yet more inviolably secluded 
than the most solitary place within high walls and jealous 
hedges; gardens in which you walk alone, safe from 
invasion by any one alien to your mood or unknown to 
your desire, and this though thousands may be treading 
the identical green alley you are at the moment following, 
or stooping to admire the same pale rose or glowing 
poppy. 
Some of these gardens in print are very old indeed, 
others but freshly planted. Among the oldest many are 
expressed in verse; for as they grow more modern both 
the outdoor and the book gardens tend toward a greater 
freedom than measure and rhyme allow, the former 
assuming a more natural habit and departing from a 
fixed symmetry that insisted on doubling every path, 
