Emerson’s Garden 
DALPH WALDO EMERSON, in 1843, wrote in his journal: “I think it will soon become 
N the pride of the country to make gardens ... A garden has this advantage, that it makes 
it indifferent where you live. If the landscape is pleasing, the garden shows it,- if tame, it 
excludes it.” 
When Emerson became irritated by pestiferous people, he would take refuge in his gar¬ 
den, and he said of such excursions: “My good hoe, as it bites into the ground, revenges 
my wrongs, and I have lest lust to bite my enemies ... By smoothing rough hillocks, I smooth 
my temper,- by extracting the long roots of the piper grass, I draw out my own splinters,- 
and in a short time I hear the bobolinks’ song and see the blessed deluge of light and color 
that rolls around me.” 
Emerson was a prophet. His philosophy is being worked out, even in this day when 
speed and high pressure are said to dominate American life. 
