22 
House & Garden 
T he man who said these things was old enough to have his 
own philosophy of life. He was a lawyer of the old school 
read his Blackstone as regularly as a preacher reads his Bible 
fought in court and out of court, and had come to know the gold 
of life when he saw it, and to choose the gold from the dross. 
He said that, for his purposes, the Decalogue was overcrowded. 
After sixty-five years of active life he had reduced the ten com¬ 
mandments to two. These two, he held, covered the murder and 
the stealing and the slandering and all the other prohibitions of 
the old code. His are affirmative commandments, and they are 
very short: 
“Be happy.” 
“Make others happy.” 
A t first these sounded to me like a cheap edition of the wishy- 
washy Pollyanna philosophy that has lately so corrupted the 
thinking of a lot of apparently sane folks. But the more I mulled 
them over in my mind, the more I saw the old gentleman was right. 
It is the bounden duty of men and women to keep as happy as they 
can, and to make others feel the same sort of joy. The man with 
the grouch is no longer the hero of our times. The man who re¬ 
fuses to share and help and lend a hand is not looked on as the 
mighty success he once was considered. The “cagey” Yankee who 
once on a day symbolized American business is being supplanted as 
a type by the man whose labor is directed to the benefit and service 
of his fellows. 
Conceive what this means. The magnate who builds a railroad, 
the publisher who issues a magazine, the merchant who conducts 
a store can no longer run his business for his sole profit and plea¬ 
sure. If it is not founded on service it is doomed to failure. Now 
service simply means helping others, and helping others is only an¬ 
other term for making others happy. 
But have I totally disregarded the old lawyer’s first command¬ 
ment? Scarcely. For the man does not exist who can make others 
happy without m,aking himself happy. 
All of which has a very important 
bearing on The Spring Gardening 
Guide which is the title of this issue of 
House & Garden. 
❖ 
H ere we are laying plans for the 
garden of this year. We have 
sketched in the contour of the land and 
located the beds. We know what an¬ 
nuals will go in when the tulips are 
blown. Like as not, by this time we 
have ordered the seeds and the shrubs. 
There will come hours in the warm 
spring air when we turn the soil and 
enrich it, when we plant the seed and 
cultivate the row. Hot summer days 
will come when we will breathe the 
perfume of myriad flowers and the sen¬ 
suous richness of the seared earth. 
Dusks will be ours—quiet mauve dusks 
when we will sit about and watch the 
countryside darken into night and the 
stars come out and the fireflies hang 
their lanterns on stalk and branch. 
Then the crisp days of autumn when 
bush and tree flame by the dooryard 
and Nature is consumed like a mighty 
hero on a pyre of her own making. 
A pleasant prospect, certainly. And 
if you labor to make such a garden the 
joy will be yours as a just return for 
the toil you have given. But—and this 
is the second commandment again—I 
am wondering if the man exists who 
can possibly make and keep a garden all to himself alone. 
A garden is a public place. Try to keep it beautiful for your¬ 
self alone and see what happens. The neighbor hurrying to catch 
his train of mornings will stop to look at the iris purpling by the 
doorstep, the motorist will throw on his brakes and halt half way 
up the hill just to look at that mass of Oriental poppies against the 
wall. People will pass, and they will be happier for the passing. 
Nature is on the side of the public. Build your wall never so 
high, but her winds will carry the seeds of that choice variety you 
reserved for yourself to a dozen different dooryards where they 
will bloom next season to defy your selfishness. Plant your hedge¬ 
row never so thick but a hollyhock will nod a friendly greeting 
over the top and the elms will sweep their cooling branches. Lock 
the gate never so tight but the breezes will waft the odor of rose 
and hyacinth and mignonette to every passerby. You can no more 
make a garden for yourself than a man can conduct a business 
for himself. Nature will not let you do it. “The army of un¬ 
alterable law” will win the victory every time. 
A GARDEN is a public service. It is your contribution to the 
. community. And a community is good to live in according 
to the measure in which each citizen does his share toward its 
betterment. 
It is not enough that law and order be preserved. Such ideals 
are but one stage removed from the savage. Only the policeman 
with his truncheon stands between us and the cave man, if law and 
order are all we desire. No, it is the mark of civilization that men 
make gardens beautiful that the town may be beautiful, that the 
joy of the tulips and the columbine which they plant and care for 
may be shared with those who pass by. 
It is logical, then, that when town fathers assemble to discuss 
the betterment of the community, they give serious attention to 
better gardens. To repeat what I said last year, better gardens 
mean better towns and better towns mean better men and women. 
In what manner these things come to 
pass I cannot say. Somewhere in his 
essays Emerson uses the figure of a 
THE DAFFODILS 
Gray is the city as a gray-beard Jew. 
Steel, paper, shoes, a thousand sordid things, 
Crowd the dull windows, fill the humming hives. 
Busy the piteous-eager heart of men. 
Yet on a day when light the wafting wind 
Teased the grim giant with a hint of spring, 
There between buildings broke the sunlight through, 
And lo! an arched dark window was ablaze 
With the gold splendor of the daffodils! 
Who said the day of miracles was done? 
I saw with my two eyes, and felt my heart 
Go fluting “April!” all the wintry day. 
And I shall never pass that way again 
Without remembrance of the swift surprise— 
Here in the sun the jonquils’ spendthrift gold; 
At the street’s end the blue, resounding sea! 
—Sara Hamilton Birchall. 
pebble that a man throws into the sea. 
The ripples spread out and out—dimin¬ 
ishing, but still going until the faintest 
rhythm of that circle touches the shore 
of another land. What land and where 
he does not say. Nothing comes to-an 
end. The circle touches something 
somewhere, sometime. 
That is about the way with the flow¬ 
ers you will plant this spring. Who 
will gain joy from them, you cannot 
say, nor when nor how. But this you 
can be sure of—that they will bring 
joy and that happiness will be yours 
according to the measure with which 
you share it. This, after all, is the sum 
and substance of gardening. 
In his own fashion old Omar spoke 
these very truths. “I sometimes 
think. . . . 
That every Hyacinth the Garden wears 
Dropt in her lap from some once lovely 
Head. 
And this reviving Herb whose tender 
Green 
Fledges the River-Lip on which we 
lean— 
Ah, lean upon it lightly! for who knows 
From what once lovely Lip it springs 
unseen!” 
