REGISTERED 
I N 
Volume XXI April, 1912 Number 4 
A Garden of Yesterday 
BY Edith Livingston Saiith 
Photographs by Ella M. Boult and others 
W HEN Now walks down the 
lane of Long Ago and 
■sees there a little girl who is. a 
woman to-day, there steals over 
the memory a sense of the unreal¬ 
ity of the changes and chances of 
time which weigh events in the 
-scale of importance. It is as easy 
for recollection to say “it is” as for 
actuality to say “it wasone has 
but to turn the bend in the road 
■of twisted years and there is the 
flower from which the faded fra¬ 
grance steals, there is the music 
from which the silence trembles, 
there is the child-happiness of un- 
responsibility in which the idleness 
■of old age finds its image — and its 
dream of peace. 
When Now walks down the lane 
•of Long Ago a woman’s hands 
reach out eagerly to clutch the 
•childish fingers which were hers, 
her heart encompasses the doubts 
and fears of a wistful, wondering, 
•opening consciousness — a 
woman's understanding bridges 
the years. 
If you go with me, you must 
.shut the lower half of the double 
door of the big white house — 
Grandmother’s house — for she 
calls “Shut the door, childie, and 
•don't forget the garden gate,” so we must do what she asks. 
“Yes, Grandmother,” you must answer, not just “Yes’m” as 
you may to the school-teacher. 
It is only a step to the garden gate. The latch lifts easily. 
Whitewashed picket fences are nicer than painted ones, aren’t 
they ? 
Y’hy ? 
Because Grandmother's fence is whitewashed and the house 
too, shingle on shingle; she won’t have it painted. 
Now turn and wave your hand to Grandmother, for she is 
looking to see if you really shut the gate — that’s so the chickens 
won't get in. ' 
“Keep in the shade, child,'’ she calls. 
(Yes, there were shadows in Grandmother's garden; how 
strange!) 
You must take a long breath because the minute you shut the 
gate and think where you are, you can smell it all at once — the 
liox that edges the paths, the 
phlox and the hollyhocks, the 
larkspur and four o’clocks, the 
bachelor buttons and ten weeks’ 
stock; the sweet peas and candy¬ 
tuft. and mignonette and sweet 
geranium (it needs a very long 
breath) ; the lavender and helio¬ 
trope, and poppies and forget-me- 
nots ; the pansies and nasturtiums 
and sunflowers, and all the other 
blossoms — wealth of green and 
color; mixed with the drowsy 
hum of insects — borne on the 
clear note of a bird, shut in by the 
overflowing sense of sunlight and 
tree-tops and the under-tender¬ 
ness of Summer’s growth. 
You mustn't go down the mid¬ 
dle path first, for that one comes 
last. No, don’t go to your wrong 
hand side. When I was much 
littler than I am now I learned my 
right hand from my wrong one 
by the paths in the garden. On 
the wrong side are all the things 
to eat—peas and beans and corn 
and such things that are nice — 
for dinner, but not when one just 
comes on a visit to the gav'den. 
Over here? Yes, there are 
some things to eat, but in with 
the flowers, currant bushes and 
pear trees that have to be propped 
up with long sticks because they are going to have so many 
pears; and peach trees and plum trees — just a few — and the 
flowers that like to be shady grow underneath them. 
Hear how the bumble bees bumble around the ever blooming 
roses and the lilies. Did you ever see lilies so much taller than 
little girls? They can look right over the fence. Great big red 
ones and white ones that smell most as sweet as roses, and the 
tiger ones with freckles like mine. 
If you were a fairy, would you rather dance here or under the 
poppy umbrellas ? 
I beg your pardon, but if you want to see the place where they 
meet in the moonlight (there are other places too — out under the 
big trees by the front gate, where the roots of the trees grow, 
right out of the ground to make houses for paper dolls, is one, 
and down in the glen) — but if you want to see their most favorite 
place, it is down the middle garden path. Yes, let us go. • 
Here, you see the box stops edging the paths and the bushes 
It is only a step to the garden gate swinging in the whitewashed, 
picket fence, and it leads you into a garden of delight 
(lO 
