Class _EA^5L3S- 
 
 Book___JS?Ma3 
 
 CSPmiGnT DEPOsm 
 
PUBLISHED BY 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 A GARDEN ROSARY. 
 
 THE HOUSE OF FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 OUR COMMON ROAD. 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
A GARDEN 
 ROSARY 
 
 By Agnes Edwards ^ /• 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 Tbe Riverside Press 
 1917 
 

 COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published March iqiy 
 
 m -4 1917 
 
 g)P|.A.45780l 
 
TO MY MOTHER 
 
 "THE ROSE OF ALL THE WORLD 
 
 THIS BOOK IS MOST LOVINGLY 
 
 DEDICATED 
 
" My mother went away from me — so wide 
 
 and vast the plain ; 
 My fire will soon be dying out, as stars at 
 
 daybreak wane. 
 Art thou not coming backy O love, to feed 
 
 the fire again?'' 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 
 

 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 April io 
 
 never respect my neighbors so 
 much as in the spring, when 
 they emerge from their closed- 
 up houses with a mystical glow of antici- 
 pation on their faces, and begin furiously 
 to hack at the soil in their hack or front or 
 side yards. The fervor of creation is on 
 them. In their minds is already spring- 
 ing up a rapturous profusion of blossom. 
 They see, as the artist sees, in that ''in- 
 ward eye which is the bliss of solitude,'' 
 the completed picture of their garden that 
 is to be. 
 
 Oh, you funny, fusty-looking woman 
 — / have passed you a thousand times 
 this winter on the village street, and 
 thought how sour and how dull you were. 
 And yet, all the time, blooming in your 
 imagination was the little flower-plat 
 you are setting forth so happily to dig. 
 
4 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 And you — you gross and common 
 money-grubber, whom I have scorned, as 
 you sat heavily in the train to town, with 
 your newspaper before your face, you, too, 
 have been secretly cherishing your vision 
 of fragrance, and flowing, swimming, 
 swaying line. 
 
 Across the street my neighbor has 
 stepped forth from the dark doors of the 
 rectory that have hidden her all winter, 
 'and is walking across her lawn — the sun- 
 light striking on her green velvet jacket. 
 At a certain point she pauses, and indi- 
 cates to the gardener the exact spot where 
 the plants are to be placed. Kneeling, he 
 plunges his fingers into the freshly turned 
 earth. That humble attitude is, to my eye, 
 not so much one of servility as of worship. 
 On one's knees — what is a more fitting 
 way to greet the season? 
 
 Thus in the spring, we, like our fiowers, 
 emerge from the rigid barriers that have 
 confined us, and appear before each other 
 in brief miraculous revelation, clothed in 
 our rightful garments — the delicate drap- 
 ery of our dreams. 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 April ii 
 
 he crocuses are up, in a sudden 
 bright thatch — although there 
 is still snow on the ground. 
 These perky little hlossomSy not confined 
 by any marked bed, but starred all over 
 the lawn and massed in a jostling crowd, 
 always remind me of the small orna- 
 mental flowers which Leonardo da Vinci 
 loves to prick out in the thick grass under 
 the feet of his inscrutable madonnas. 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 April 12 
 
 ow delicately the snowdrops 
 raise their pale heads on their 
 meek, slender necks! One al- 
 most wants to pat them — as one might 
 a feeble child — and say, ''Dont bother, 
 dear, to get up, just yet.'' 
 
 *' For when a little flower beholds 
 For the first time the snow, it wonders 
 To see it white, so white; 
 And the flower says: * The snow will never 
 Do me a hurt — will never harm me. 
 It is so white.' " 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 April 13 
 
 very spring niy mother sends me 
 over to a distant greenhouse to 
 ask for a few of the Killarney 
 rosebushes, which at this season^for some 
 reason, they throw away. The hushes are 
 prickly and brown and unwieldy, and 
 even when they are wrapped in canvas 
 make a difficult bundle to handle, giving 
 no hint of the beauty that is enfolded 
 within them. They always remind me of 
 those little boxes of Japanese manufac- 
 ture which contain a few closely packed 
 dried pieces of wood. Drop them in water 
 and they expand — and some of them 
 even emit a subtle fragrance. Thus does 
 man laughingly and audaciously imitate 
 the mysteries of nature. 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 April 14 
 
 ! till planting — delightful toil! 
 With soil-blackened hands I 
 
 pause, and sit a moment in 
 contemplation — my trowel in my lap. 
 Surely one never fulfills his destiny of 
 mirroring the image of the Creator more 
 truly than in the spring. For — remem- 
 ber — the Lord first made the Garden 
 of Eden and then created man, giving 
 him, as his prime obligation, — if we 
 believe the Scripture, — ''to dress it and 
 to keep it.'' Ah, blessed season, when we, 
 even in this hurrying twentieth century, 
 may enter into the labors and rewards of 
 the first man, in the childhood of the 
 world! 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 April 17 
 
 ust like old ladies untwisting 
 their curl-papers in fidgety 
 haste to get off to a church socia- 
 ble, so the hyacinths — as soon as spring 
 is fairly started — shake out their cork- 
 screw curls and hasten to appear upon 
 the scene, spilling, in their agitation, a 
 whole bottle of strong perfume down the 
 front of their dresses. Stiff, for all their 
 f us sines s, they dote on being in society: 
 they are always among the first comers. 
 But they lack the social gift. Who can 
 gracefully introduce the hyacinth into a 
 spring bouquet? 
 
lO A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 April 20 
 
 he garden plots look more medi- 
 ceval than ever. Is it the inten- 
 sity of the scilla's blue — the 
 strange lavender and violet of the crocus? 
 What is it that makes these earliest spring- 
 time flowers seem quite unlike any others? 
 I think it is partly because they come so 
 straight out of the ground, with so little 
 foliage and branch and bush. There they 
 are! — bright, decorative flecks on the very 
 ground itself — in conventional primi- 
 tive arrangement and color, like a lovingly 
 conceived and quaintly wrought border 
 of an Italian painting. 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY li 
 
 May 7 
 
 ne by one we have all emerged 
 <from our wintry houses, and are 
 
 living in our front yards, and 
 chatting over our side walls. The flowers 
 make a community of what was merely a 
 street. And our little beds on either side 
 the walk are quite as distinctive as their 
 several owners. There is Miss W.'s de- 
 mure and guileless plat, with prim little 
 hyacinths and tidy pale English daisies 
 — innocent and maidenly. Mrs. T. has 
 a more exclusive assemblage. The high 
 hedge hides them from the vulgar passer- 
 by, and her scilla are bluer, her violets 
 more shy and more intense, her primroses 
 more luxuriant than any of ours. Mrs. 
 M. has a row of velvet-eyed pansies, like 
 meek little girls, or like naive little pup- 
 pies, sitting, well trained and expectant, 
 in the places they have been told to sit. Our 
 tulips, hastily flung in at the last moment, 
 have come up in a rush-and-tumble sort 
 
12 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 oj way, like ladies pulling on their gloves 
 as they hurry down the street. 
 
 And over at Miss G.'s — the lilies of 
 the valley shrink against the empty house 
 and hide their heads in grief , because 
 their mistress no longer comes , slowly, 
 feebly, to the edge of the porch to look 
 down at them with her fond, whimsical 
 smile. 
 
a garden rosary i3 
 
 May 15 
 
 y mother sees to her spring 
 \ planting in the vigorous fashion 
 I of a woman thoroughly accus- 
 tomed to this part of the household regime. 
 She looks over catalogues with a profes- 
 sional air, and directs the various garden- 
 ing operations, masterfully. I see her 
 glance at my brooding solicitude and gin- 
 gerly attempted experiments, with a smile 
 half amused and wholly tender. I imagine 
 that a practical gardener regards the sen- 
 timentalities of a novice with something 
 of the indulgence with which a grand- 
 mother watches the upbringing of the 
 second generation. I have often noticed 
 that people, to whom flowers are not a 
 luxury but an essential, do treat them in 
 this matter-of-fact fashion. It savors of 
 the difference between a wife's automatic 
 efficient attentions and a sweetheart's 
 fluttering caresses. 
 
14 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 May 20 
 
 here is something soulless about 
 the columbine to me. It is ex- 
 quisite: fragile and yet not 
 weak. But in spite of its superlatively 
 fine finish it makes no spiritual appeal. 
 As I hold this daintily tinted, daintily 
 fashioned blossom in my hand, and study 
 its minute and perfect markings, I am 
 reminded, curiously, of a little Japanese 
 manservant we once had. Deft and agile, 
 he was a jewel sparkling in that dismal 
 ditch of incompetent service that muddies 
 the background of every housekeeper' s 
 life. But one day, trying to argue with 
 him on some point of exceedingly simple 
 morality, I was met by a face as amiable, 
 as impassive, as the face of an ivory 
 image. And it was not only the smiling, 
 inscrutable countenance which I was 
 powerless to change: it was not only that 
 we slipped by each other in the lapses of 
 his lingo: it was that I was clutching at 
 and probing in vain to touch, a respon- 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 15 
 
 sive chord where there was none. I am per- 
 fectly sure, now J that there was none, I 
 could catch his interest: I could enlist his 
 intelligence. He would he obedient, cour- 
 teous, gay. But as for understanding, for 
 the briefest instant, my point of view — 
 impossible. He was as unmoral as a little 
 hopping bird which may perch on your 
 finger, but will never press against your 
 heart; as angelically soulless as this frilled 
 and fluted columbine which flutters in 
 the breeze, but never, never abandons her- 
 self to the elements. 
 
I6 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 May 25 
 
 ne quaffs the fragrance of the 
 wallflower with something of 
 the inquisitive satisfaction with 
 which one quaffs a draught of old wine. 
 There is even a similarity in the gesture. 
 You do not sniff a wallflower casually as 
 you might a rose: you taste its complex 
 odor with a dignified curiosity and de- 
 light. 
 
 For some reason I can never smell this 
 particular flower without being reminded 
 of a morning spent in the Russian Cathe- 
 dral in New York — that paradoxical 
 transplantation of an Old-World exotic to 
 our plain American soil. As I watched 
 the mild, inscrutable faces of the long- 
 haired, white-draped priests, maneuver- 
 ing through the labyrinthine celebration: 
 as I listened to the choir, their voices ris- 
 ing and falling unaided by an organ, I 
 was overcome by the ponderousness and 
 intricacy of the institution. Such rituals 
 are never the direct fruit of any one man's 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 17 
 
 invention. They are the composite re- 
 sult of centuries of human aspiration and 
 endeavor. Like an old tapestry — woven 
 by one generation: worn, mended, and 
 rewoven by succeeding generations: like a 
 consummately fruity pudding, into which 
 have been stirred half a hundred mysteri- 
 ous ingredients, producing a whole un- 
 like any of them, and yet incorporating 
 even the slightest. 
 
 Of course no institution is simple, and 
 neither is any individual: all are '' sjiip- 
 pets and waste of old ancestral leavings.'" 
 And yet the sense of an elaborate spiritual 
 network which came to me so vividly that 
 morning always recurs when I inhale the 
 rich, elusive aroma of the wallflower. 
 
l8 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 June i 
 
 h, the modesty^ the ineffable 
 modesty of the lily of the valley 
 as it hides among the leaves! 
 As one slips one* s fingers down its slender 
 stem and pulls it up and out from its 
 smooth sheath, it hangs its head — not 
 limply hut shyly, in exquisite diffidence. 
 But have you ever noticed, when it is 
 picked and placed, perhaps with scatter- 
 ing violets and appropriate greenery in a 
 crystal vase, how instantly that aura of 
 virginity vanishes? It is just as dainty in 
 its little frilled skirts, hut there is a sophis- 
 tication in its laciness, an elahorate fanci- 
 ness hoth in its spreading network of green 
 and white and in its perfume, which, 
 so delicate in the sweet out of doors, emits 
 an artificial piquancy in the warmth of 
 the house. Charming, hut no longer in the 
 least timid, it ceases to he the Lucy of a 
 Wordsworth idyll, and is the consciously 
 chaste Madame de Mortsauf, that '' Lys 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 19 
 
 dans la Vallee'' too virtuous to he pure, 
 consummately and eternally embalmed 
 for the perusal of fervid and romantic 
 youth. 
 
20 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 June 20 
 
 have been arranging flowers 
 through the house: in shallow 
 glass howls; in thin vases; in 
 wide-mouthed pitchers; in rustic brown 
 willow baskets. 
 
 Is it a waste of time to spend several 
 hours in such a fleeting task which will 
 have to be done over again to-morrow? 
 That isy perhaps, the idea of those people 
 who drape artificial roses from their 
 piano scarfs and set Japanese cherry- 
 blossoms — cunningly made out of linen 
 • — on their dining-room tables. They 
 think if the touch of color which only a 
 flower can give has been obtained in a 
 room, that the effect might as well be pre- 
 served. But the signiflcance of cut flowers 
 is not merely that they brighten a dark 
 corner or fill a void, but that they bear 
 mute and eloquent evidence of fond and 
 constant care. It is this sense of tender 
 solicitude which pervades the room as 
 much as the fragrance and grace of the 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 21 
 
 flower itself. An enameled face may he 
 more perfect than a natural complexion, 
 but to a person of refined vision the charm 
 of the human countenance is in its mo- 
 bility, its swiftly changing color, its ex- 
 pressions which depend upon muscles 
 too fine to he recognized, and a million 
 living pores too small to he seen. The 
 enamel masks all this: the spiritual mean- 
 ing of the face is obliterated. So it is in a 
 room decorated with artificial flowers. 
 
22 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 June 26 
 
 he first bluebell has rung its 
 arrival! 
 
a garden rosary 23 
 
 June 2^ 
 
 hile my mother sits in the after- 
 noon sun J Gegena is playing 
 with the shadows of the birds 
 that flit above her head from rose arch to 
 rose pillar. Caressed out of all the sav- 
 age instincts of cathood, this dainty beast 
 does not even lift her eyes to the birds 
 themselves. 
 
 A gray kitten playing with the glancing 
 shadow of a bird that mocks at her — here 
 is a gentle degeneracy that might tempt 
 the fantastic brush of Aubrey Beardsley^ 
 or lure the pen of Hawthorne down the 
 lines of his musing ''Sketch-Book,'' 
 
24 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 June 28 
 
 here are ten thousand swelling 
 buds on the rosebushes, press- 
 ing up against the house. 
 Ramblers, climbers, trailers, — / almost 
 gasp when I think of the impending pan- 
 orama of color, and the flood of perfume, 
 I feel myself a princess in a mysteriously 
 beleaguered tower: a Brunhilde with the 
 fire no power could retard creeping up 
 around her: like the Sleeping Beauty, 
 when the spell-born bushes began to climb 
 higher, higher, higher — hedging her in, 
 for a hundred years, with her dreams. 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 25 
 
 June 30 
 
 he roses have hurst forth every- 
 where at once, like a trium- 
 phant army unfurling myriad 
 banners to the sky, and sending up to 
 heaven shouts of exaltation. The walls 
 of the house have fallen at the vibration 
 of this Joshua's band. Or — if one must 
 be accurate, even when overwhelmed — 
 completely disappeared behind the bloom 
 and the foliage. 
 
26 
 
 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 July i 
 
 ne corner of this garden is 
 crowded with cahhagy red roses 
 — full, solid, hard; struggling 
 — like a too tightly corseted woman — to 
 he beautiful. They make me feel as if I 
 were in the foyer after a matinee, jammed 
 with overfed, idle matrons. With their 
 common perfume and their pur ply painted 
 cheeks, they are good-looking enough, in 
 their way. One even imagines that their 
 husbands think them handsome. 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 27 
 
 July 2 
 
 win yellow roses on the same 
 stem, like little blonde, round- 
 Jaced girls. They are so ab- 
 surdly alike they are rather silly. I find 
 myself smiling at them in amusement. 
 
28 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 July 3 
 
 ehind the lattice there has 
 bloomed a large white rose — 
 pure without pallor: faultless 
 without tedium — the perfection of flower- 
 hood, . . . 
 
 It has rained, and going out to the 
 white rose garden I found the queenly 
 creature, bowed almost to the ground, her 
 flowing robes drabbled by the dirt, I 
 clipped her free, and without more ado 
 bore her to the kitchen faucet and washed 
 her off — for all the world like picking up 
 a bewildered princess in a London slum 
 and subjecting her to the strenuous puri- 
 fication of a Salvation Army free bath. 
 The soil floated off like a forgotten sin, 
 leaving not a mar upon the snowy surface 
 of those ample petals. Reverently I placed 
 her in a crystal vase, where, like Sir Gala- 
 had's saintly sister, — only that my rose 
 is too sumptuously developed to be a maid, 
 — she stands in serious contemplation, 
 in the midst of the hush that her presence 
 creates around her. 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 29 
 
 July 4 
 
 / is quite like a city street, this 
 little garden of mine, with its 
 unceasing floral procession. 
 Look at this small wild rose, so hectic in 
 its eagerness for life that it has thrown 
 its little self wide open at the first whisper 
 of the sun, thrusting up its tiny stamens 
 eagerly. Now, like a Fantine of the streets, 
 even while tripping along in the weakness 
 of youth, it is shattered hy the exhaustion 
 of old age. And there are the twin blonde 
 sisters again, nodding in amiable unison. 
 Although they have become frizzly headed 
 spinsters, they are still absurdly identical. 
 Only there is something pathetic in mid- 
 die-aged blondness: in the trivial silliness 
 of this old wives' tale. 
 
30 
 
 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 Julys 
 
 he white rose — the Queen — 
 is passing. She is drifting into 
 dissolution as calmly as she 
 ascended her throne — gently droppings 
 one hy one, the insignia of her worldly 
 reign. Each petal as it falls retains its 
 untinged whiteness. There is no fading: 
 no shriveling. One hy one the large per- 
 fect hearts float to the ground — im- 
 passive, marmoreal — unflecked hy any 
 earthly decay. 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 31 
 
 July 6 
 
 ow dignified tall flowers are!' 
 The campanula, the larkspur,, 
 tall roses, and one madonna 
 lily are clasped in the sweetest, straight-- 
 est tangle — their heads bowing in the 
 breeze. How much more impressive than 
 the low pansy and the humble portulaca / 
 One sees how the moral attributes — such 
 as dignity — become inevitably associ-- 
 ated with the obvious physical corollary. 
 It was Aristotle who said that any object 
 to be beautiful must have a certain mag- 
 nitude. 
 
32 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 July 7 
 
 have been tying up the ramblers 
 that climb all over the white 
 balustrade of the porch. They 
 look uncomfortable enough now, pulled 
 snugly in, and their long trailers, that 
 whipped untidily in the wind, neatly 
 tucked behind the railing. But, as a 
 schoolroom full of wriggling children, 
 who slip and slide and turn incessantly in 
 their seats, subside under the rule of a dis- 
 ciplinarian, so my unruly ramblers will 
 grow accustomed to this imposed restraint, 
 and — in the end — thrive much better, 
 with their disorder regulated in this 
 fashion. . . . 
 
 One of the twin blonde roses has fallen. 
 Like a pair of old boarding-house asso- 
 ciates who have lodged under the same 
 roof, and sat beside each other at the same 
 respectable although somewhat limited 
 table, year after year, and now are rudely 
 separated . . . and forever. To the tran- 
 sients who come and go, this small tragedy 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 33 
 
 of bereavement is hardly perceptible. But 
 there is something touching in mere faith- 
 fulness. And Death, with his winnowing 
 fan, is, even to mediocre existences, dig- 
 nified. 
 
 " I had two flowers. One is withered now; 
 The other mourneth for her sister.'' 
 
34 
 
 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 July 8 
 
 have sweet William in one's 
 garden is like possessing a 
 substantial loaf of fine white 
 bread in the larder. So firm it is — so 
 close and compact: so friendly and whole- 
 somely satisfying. 
 
a garden rosary 35 
 
 July 9 
 
 ne thing that proves the high 
 evolution oj flowers in the spirit- 
 ual world, as well as in the 
 physical, — if indeed, proof were needed^ 
 — is their gayety. For gayety — so it 
 seems to me — is one of the very last quaU 
 ities to crown a creation. Animals are 
 rarely gay, although often playful. One 
 cannot picture savage folk with whimsi^ 
 cality. The elemental natures are grim, 
 Only with refinement of feeling may one 
 acquire the light touch. 
 
 But flowers are nearly always gay. 
 Even the heavy-footed hollyhocks and the 
 thick-stemmed petunias and the clumsy- 
 stepping sunflower join the floral dance, 
 and take their part in color and motion all 
 their brief, bright lives. 
 
 To me this laughing, fleeting joyous- 
 ness is one of the fairest mediums through 
 which divine Nature gleams upon mortal 
 sight. This is one reason why my mother , 
 
36 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 who has the same gayety that marks the 
 blowing poppy or the mischievous morn- 
 ing-glory, is to me the most delightful of 
 all companions. 
 
a garden rosary 37 
 
 July 
 
 he canterbury bells, bluebells, 
 and harebells, are climbing 
 high, their white and blue cups 
 turned upward toward the sun, like clus- 
 ters of enchanted chimes, ringing a pcean, 
 whose sweetness is not sound but fra- 
 grance. 
 
38 a garden rosary 
 
 July io 
 
 found a tiny nasturtium this 
 morning — precisely and per- 
 [fectly formed, and gay ly color ed, 
 but about one third normal size. Oddly 
 enough, this sprightly dwarf did not seem 
 in the least like a nasturtium which had 
 been stunted, but resembled another flower 
 altogether — like one of those curious di- 
 minutive people we see sometimes, dressed 
 like an adult but like a child in height, 
 and yet seeming neither man nor boy, but 
 a totally different species. How odd it is 
 that mere size can so utterly alter a human 
 or a floral personality ! Perhaps this dis- 
 tinction, which we have been accustomed 
 to think of as entirely superficial, is not 
 so superficial after all. Perhaps it has 
 more to do with the difference between a 
 miniature and a life-sized painting, be- 
 tween the effect of a massive tome and 
 a slender volume, than either poets or 
 painters would like to have us believe. 
 
a garden rosary 39 
 
 July ii 
 
 sometimes think that flowers 
 show their refinement nowhere 
 more artistically than in the 
 way they take their departure. They lin- 
 ger a moment after they have murmured 
 adieu, and then — they are gone, relin- 
 quishing as obediently as they accepted 
 their brief part on Nature's revolving 
 panorama. And below our surface regret 
 is an undercurrent of relief that these 
 most delicate friends never stay long 
 enough to become commonplace: never 
 commit that most grievous sin against 
 idealism — the sin of excess: never press 
 upon our greedy palates the juice of thai 
 most fatal fruit — ^'loves sad satiety.'' 
 
40 
 
 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 July 13 
 
 ust as in music it is not merely 
 the melody that appeals to the 
 listening ear, hut the harmony 
 and counter pointy so in the garden it is 
 not merely the perfume and the color 
 that constitute the entire charm. It is the 
 texture and the form of the foliage: the 
 polished surface of rose-leaves: the tender 
 suede of summer cypress: the bronze of 
 the snapdragon leaf. It is the handsome 
 stalks of the unflowered phlox: and the 
 sword-like curve of Japanese iris, and the 
 flag. There is a sculpturesque quality in 
 flowers which we sometimes miss — 
 blinded by the flash of their painted bloom. 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 41 
 
 July 14 
 
 he larkspur — intensely blue — 
 gleams vividly against the sky. 
 The lighter -colored spurs look 
 faded in the sunlight. But after I bring 
 them to the house and place them in a 
 spreading earthen bowl, the bright blue 
 seems almost too heavy, while the paler 
 shade is celestially bright. Now one sees 
 the practical application of the old prin- 
 ciple of Egyptian art: those strong or- 
 anges and browns which decorated the 
 exteriors of temples and tombs, were quite 
 suitable to the dazzling sunlight in which 
 they were seen and for which they were 
 designed. These same colors confined to 
 a vase or a strip of embroidery , and placed 
 in a modern drawing-room clash and tear 
 at everything else. 
 
42 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 July 15 
 
 t has been stiflingly hot and 
 damp and this, combined with a 
 day or two of enforced neglect on 
 my part, has affected the cut flowers in the 
 house with symptoms like those of a me- 
 diceval plague. A sticky mould attacked 
 them, as they sagged upon their rotting 
 stems. I found them with their petals 
 fallen: the water stale: the vases soiled; and 
 my swift remedying of the situation seemed 
 to find a gruesome parallel in the offices 
 of the driver of the ancient dead cart^ col- 
 lecting the corrupted remains of what had 
 once been fair ladies and brave gallants. 
 Oh, the horror of earthly mortality on the 
 face of beauty I My flowers were dead of 
 the plague — a loathsome plague — and /, 
 their one-time lover, and their now-by- 
 necessity burial-master, gathered up the 
 sad decay with morbid feelings of horror 
 and grief. As I disposed of them, the old 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 43 
 
 Spanish soleares beat again and again 
 in my ears: — 
 
 Yestereven 
 The dead cart passed me nigh — 
 A hand hung out uncovered — 
 / knew her again, thereby. 
 
44 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 July i6 
 
 n ordinary turtle — thick-set 
 and heavy, with striped legs 
 and armored head — has found 
 his way to my garden, and there he sliig- 
 gishly spraddles in the foreground — 
 a touch of Bakst color — a grotesque, 
 quaint form among those heavenly stalks. 
 
a garden rosary 45 
 
 July 17 
 
 omewhere there is a tradition 
 that the word '' Mesopotamia y'' 
 repeated and repeated and re- 
 peated, will hypnotize both speaker and 
 listener. I remember how this notion en- 
 snared my childish fancy , and once, when 
 I felt very brave, I whispered it over and 
 over, under my breath, — ''Mesopota- 
 mia — Mesopotamia'' nodding, nodding, 
 as I said it. I cannot be sure that the state 
 superinduced by this performance was of 
 hypnotic nature. But it might well have 
 been. Without doubt there are certain 
 words which work upon our imaginations , 
 merely because of their arrangement of syl- 
 lables, not at all for their intrinsic mean- 
 ing: just as there are certain colors which 
 are symbolic without any chart to interpret 
 them. There is a peculiar beauty and sig- 
 nificance to line, irrespective of the thing 
 which it represents. Even to the layman 
 vertical lines express stability; horizontal 
 lines, repose. Curved lines are the lines 
 
46 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 of motion, and the curves differ within 
 themselves: some are soft, others are resil- 
 ient. 
 
 So, when I look upon the flat, shallow, 
 entrancing bell of the campanula persici- 
 folia, I find myself gently hypnotized, — 
 borne out of this mundane consciousness 
 — gazing — gazing 
 
 " till I become, 
 In soul with what I gaze on, wed'' 
 
 I do not know whether it is the ineffable 
 blue of this flower which stuns me into 
 such sweet ecstasy. I think it is some- 
 thing more poignant than color alone. It 
 is the form — that delicate flare, more 
 mystical than star shape, more elusive 
 than the heavier canterbury bell. 
 
 In some countries, I have heard, these 
 campanulas grow wild and abundantly. 
 I wonder if that country has not a spirit- 
 ual haze above it, when the blue flowers 
 spread their faint fair petals to the sun 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 47 
 
 July i8 
 
 ertain spiky flowers develop like 
 certain spiky natures — un- 
 evenly. Take the snapdragon, 
 for instance. The blossoms have already 
 fallen at the base of the stalk before the 
 tip is in bloom. When it is young it has 
 a long string of immature buds to top it: 
 when it is fullblown it has dead seed 
 pods to detract from it. Even the mignon- 
 ette does this, and the balsam, and the 
 foxglove. The larkspur alone is clever. It 
 creeps up its long spike and maintains 
 its charm all the way. And when one seed 
 pod stands bare it can be clipped off, and 
 the last new blossom looks as if it were 
 the first. It is like the Parisienne who 
 can perform her entire toilet so deftly 
 that 'she is alluring in every stage and 
 process. But most spiky flowers are like 
 poorly furnished houses which have not 
 quite enough furniture for completeness. 
 If you take the mat for the parlor, the 
 hall is bare: if you move enough chairs to 
 the dining-room, you have to stand up in 
 the library. 
 
48 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 July 19 
 
 alking through ones garden is 
 like passing down the aisle of 
 the village church, where one 
 knows every one with the superficial 
 knowledge of long familiarity. 
 
 The petunia, for instance: it does not 
 take much penetration to see in her the 
 floppy -hatted village belle, with a weaky 
 pretty face, and unaristocratic hands and 
 feet. 
 
 The scarlet salvia is a shrewd, shrill- 
 voiced termagant, who can — in fits of 
 rage — scream so that the neighbors hear 
 her a mile away. She has a kind of good 
 looks, however, — carmine lips, sparkling 
 eyes, and a lively carriage, — legitimate 
 expressions of a certain quick magnetism. 
 One cannot wholly dislike her, in spite 
 of her bad temper. 
 
 The cineraria, like a caricature of a 
 flower, cut out of tin, reminds me of one 
 of those dumb, forbidding dowagers, who 
 carry on the tradition of a respected fam- 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 49 
 
 ily. She is always as well dressed as if 
 she were going to a funeral. Although she 
 never attracts any intimate advances , yet, 
 both because of her own composure and 
 her suggestion of worthy heritage, she is 
 granted a dignified if dtdl position in 
 the social register. 
 
 The sunflower, with its gentle, giant-like 
 qualities of largeness and simplicity, is 
 surely a ''correspondent'' — as the Swed- 
 enborgians might say — to the open- 
 faced, good-natured village yokel: a clum- 
 sy lout, and yet deemed a worthy object 
 for the art of a Millet. 
 
 Love-in-a-mist is rather pathetic. I 
 think she is a sentimental, shadowy old 
 maid, hiding the lack of vital experience 
 in her life behind a veil of harmless in- 
 nuendoes. 
 
 Obviously the dianthus, with its spicy 
 tang, is a buxom, wholesome young 
 matron, while the salpiglossis, although 
 extremely ladylike, is not, to the sensitive 
 eye, really a lady. 
 
 But it is the zinnia which invokes the 
 most trenchant musings. Stiff and plain 
 
50 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 and unyielding, you recognize in her 
 something of the fiber of the homely, un- 
 compromising country woman who does 
 her duty with zeal and carries herself with 
 uprightness. In her pristine state she 
 commands respect, hut rarely romantic 
 affection. But — have you ever looked 
 upon the stained-glass windows of some 
 little church and seen depicted there the 
 face and figure of an austere saint ? The 
 flat contours, the angular outlines, — 
 these only enhance the symbolism of the 
 rose, the gold, and the green. So, to me, 
 the zinnia has the potentialities of state- 
 liness and the rich color of an infinitely 
 finer fiower, just as the uncompromising 
 country woman not infrequently attains, 
 to those who understand, something of the 
 sublime beauty of a stained-glass saint. 
 
a garden rosary 51 
 
 July 20 
 
 think the gaillardia, like the 
 \ flower on a patchwork quilt y 
 with yellow calico petals and 
 a brown merino center, was made hy a 
 country cousin oj Dame Nature. I even 
 fancy it was done during one of those par- 
 ticularly depressing winter seasons; as 
 when, her desire for cheerfulness distorted 
 hy the long-continued cheerlessness of her 
 environment, the energetic housekeeper 
 sits down hy the side of a kerosene lamp, 
 and, with the aid of a five-cent needle- 
 work periodical, works out a laborious 
 atrocity. 
 
52 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 July 21 
 
 he Evangeline rose has bloomed. 
 It is as if a border on the daint- 
 iest of wall-papers had been 
 unrolled. 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 53 
 
 July 22 
 
 have been reading a very in- 
 genious hook entitled '' The 
 Human side of Plants,'' in 
 which the writer describes with a good deal 
 of vividness many of the peculiar habits 
 of plants, — such as the power to mimic, 
 the response to light and heat, the at- 
 tracting of pollen-bearers and food mes- 
 sengers, etc., — using these facts to build 
 up his theory that the botanical world, 
 which we are accustomed to consider in- 
 sensate, has inclinations and aversions 
 similar to those of the animal world. 
 Whether Mr. Dixon's statements are en- 
 tirely authentic, I do not know. But even 
 if his statistics are true, I, for one, fail to 
 find' any inspiration from the arguments 
 that plants struggle, suffer, bargain, de- 
 liberately adapt themselves to circum- 
 stances, and plan for the future as does — 
 perforce — the steaming mass of human- 
 ity. To me the supreme restfulness of 
 companionship with this part of the great 
 
54 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 natural jamily is precisely because it 
 seems to have a different consciousness; 
 a different connection with nature; a dif- 
 ferent spiritual sense. 
 
 Insects, stones y trees, ponds, clouds, 
 and men have their period of inchoate 
 existence, their time of fullest develop- 
 ment, and their time of decay. That they 
 individually realize this unfolding of 
 existence may or may not he. But even 
 if they are conscious, why conclude that 
 it is with the kind of consciousness char- 
 acteristic of man? It seems more ra- 
 tional and beautiful to believe that the 
 varying forms of Nature commune with 
 her according to their various capacities. 
 Would not a violet with the hopes of a 
 maiden be as grotesque as a stone with 
 the desires of an ox ? Or does it bring any 
 of them nearer, to fancy them all swayed 
 by the instinct of mankind ? 
 
 The birth of a flower is painless; its 
 development unattended by ills; its mat- 
 ing sure; its separation from its matured 
 offspring without regret. Does it enhance 
 the meaning of life to imagine that the 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 55 
 
 dandelion, sending its babies flying out 
 into the world, experiences the unutterable 
 grief of the human mother at the depart- 
 ure of her children ? 
 
 Ah, no! those to whom a flower garden 
 brings the greatest solace will find no 
 meaning in the assurance that these aloof 
 and lovely friends are subject to the sad 
 repetition of ambitions, despairs, pas- 
 sions, that our too tightly strung mental- 
 ity is heir to. They live, they breathe; they 
 have their being; but, oh, how differently 
 from us ! Unhampered by the cumbersome 
 processes of emotion and logic and self- 
 will, they happily commune with God 
 according to the harmony of their nature 
 — not according to the nature of the chafed 
 and wistful mortal who so yearningly 
 surveys them. 
 
56 a garden rosary 
 
 July 2^ 
 
 veil has fallen between me and 
 my garden: my own mood has 
 risen like a blank y impenetra- 
 ble mist between me and the flowers. In 
 vain I clip and tend and pluck. They tell 
 me nothing. For the way of communica- 
 tion between the human world and the 
 world of nature is over the slenderest of 
 bridges, and only when one is in a psychic 
 mood will ones feet fi?id and keep the 
 swaying way across. Always men are try- 
 ing to analyze the exact number and fiber of 
 links that bind — or separate — the min- 
 eral from the vegetable; the vegetable from 
 the animal; the animal from the human; 
 the human from the divine. Elaborately 
 armed with science they manage every 
 year or so to push back some of the old 
 theories and construct new ones — to be, 
 in their turn, destroyed. It is possible that 
 science may, indeed, reduce and tabulate 
 all forms of matter into their elements. 
 But possibly, too, the scientific power is 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 57 
 
 not so direct nor any more true than the 
 psychic. Children, and nations in the 
 time of their childhood y converse with 
 trees and stones and stars without a con- 
 scious sense of harrier. The fairy story 
 that tells of the speaking flower or the 
 moral fish finds no incredulity on the part 
 of children . For them the bridges of under- 
 standing span out in every direction, and 
 they run across without thought of won- 
 der. But in the press of life, our bridges 
 break: only one or two are left — as frail 
 as a spider s thread. And when the heavy 
 mists of earthly thought bear down upon 
 us, even these are obscured, and we are 
 isolated in the sad, restricted company 
 of our own kind and species. 
 
 When 07ies eyes are dulled with hu- 
 man tears, and one's brain is clogged with 
 worldly perplexities, one may not enter 
 into communion with a flower. 
 
58 a garden rosary 
 
 July 28 
 
 he lemon verbena is like one of 
 those rare and inconspicuous 
 women whose life is made up 
 of continual and silent, willing sacrifice. 
 Break a spray and it thrusts out another 
 even more fragrant. Crush the leaves 
 between your fingers and a heavenly per- 
 fume is your only rebuff. It lives by giv- 
 ing. There is no effect of tragic despolia- 
 tion as when one cuts a rose, which is the 
 sole consummation of many weeks of 
 growth. Neither is there any of that nig- 
 gardly drawing back — as with the sweet 
 peas, which never give you as long a stem 
 after the first few cuttings. Neither is 
 it the selfish renewal of the impatiens 
 which pops into blossom again as soon 
 as one flower falls, because it cannot bear 
 to be unarrayed. No — there is some- 
 thing of almost spiritual beauty in the 
 loving renewal of the verbena, perpetually 
 adding its quiet, ineffable contribution to 
 the charm of the garden bouquet. 
 
a garden rosary 59 
 
 July 
 
 he whiteness of phlox: snowy, 
 thick; neither ghastly nor wax- 
 en; neither creamy nor pallid; 
 hut white — whiter than a wind-blown 
 cloud; whiter than a swan's neck, or sun- 
 dried linen. Gazing at this gracefully 
 shaped and intensely colorless blossom, 
 I am utterly silenced. 
 
6o A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 July 30 
 
 he dahlias have come too soon; 
 
 like clumping, important guests 
 - tremendously well dressed, 
 hut taking up more room than is — at 
 this special moment — provided for them. 
 Their velvet robes crowd the space I had 
 reserved for the dainty, muslined-f rocked 
 sabbatia. I was giving a little afternoon 
 tea, and here the dahlias have come and 
 turned it into a sort of regal reception. 
 Now I must race around and procure 
 proper accommodations for them, in the 
 way of vases and jugs and pitchers. 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 6l 
 
 August i 
 
 \frican marigolds they call them, 
 these brilliant pomponed crea- 
 tures, atop of their erect stalks j 
 silhouetted in hold outline, and with stac- 
 cato spring against the sky. I do not know 
 whether they grow in Africa; I associate 
 them with the small dooryards of Cape Cod 
 cottages. But certainly there is something 
 about them which always recalls to me a 
 brief and vivid picture of that other land. 
 When I see these tall, flashing blossoms 
 I am reminded — why, I cannot tell — 
 of a morning when my mother and I leaned 
 over our courtyard railing in Biskra. At- 
 tired in gorgeous colors, with magnifi- 
 cent headdresses and vivid burnouses, the 
 Arab soldiers of France gathered in the 
 white piazza of the town. A host of them, 
 bright and silent — wonderfully straight 
 upon their perfect steeds. Hypnotized by 
 the kaleidoscope of color, I leaned my 
 chin in my hand and watched them as — 
 inspired by some Oriental rhythm — they 
 galloped down the dazzling street. 
 
62 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 August 4 
 
 here has been a terrific three 
 days' gale, and my flowers are 
 prone upon the earth — tossed , 
 torny and beaten. The pink hollyhocks ^ 
 that stood in such stately graciousness in 
 the corner of the house, are bent prostrate 
 to the ground: the bachelor s buttons have 
 turned up their coat collars and are shiver- 
 ing away from the wind. The meek little 
 faces of the impatiens are discolored by 
 the bitter smiting, and every now and then 
 a flat poppy falls — face downward — 
 on the drenched grass. The snapdragons 
 are utterly demoralized — / don't see how 
 they can ever recover — and the sweet 
 peas are stained with weeping. But it is 
 the hollyhocks that fill me with keenest 
 grief. One tall creature is broken sharply 
 in two, and hangs there mutely, like a 
 high-born lady overwhelmed by misfor- 
 tune: a bruised reed that has, contrary to 
 the kind assurances of Scripture, been most 
 cruelly broken. Of course the calendulas 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 63 
 
 — sturdy peasants — did nt mind it a hit. 
 But the wee eschscholtzias have shut their 
 eyes in anguish. 
 
64 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 August 5 
 
 his morning I have been " bind- 
 ing up the broken-hearted'' 
 and setting at liberty ''them 
 that are bruised.'' One lissom pink holly- 
 hock will never recover, but I have brought 
 her to end her days in a tall glass vase 
 in the shelter of the gray -paneled parlor. 
 A beautiful lady, stricken down by a mor- 
 tal disease, but still smiling bravely, she 
 stands erect — one third her once glorious 
 height. I have brought in the impatiens 
 and it is thrusting out new little blossoms 
 as soon as it possibly can. It recovers 
 quickly. The snapdragons are sullenly 
 sodden. They lie sulkily on the ground 
 and drop their petals in the most dis- 
 gruntled way. The balsam, under its 
 thick and shining thatch, hardly seems to 
 know that anything has happened. The 
 poppies refuse to open their eyes, al- 
 though it is ten o'clock in the morning. 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 65 
 
 August 6 
 
 / is only to man that the ap- 
 proaches of old age are ab- 
 horrent. The advancing years 
 bring no alarm^ no apprehension to the 
 simpler, more vital children of Nature. An 
 oak is not majestic until it is venerable: 
 a rosebush is a scraggly-looking affair 
 the first year or so. And how magnificent 
 is even the common trumpet vine, when, 
 antique and powerful, it clambers over the 
 roof of a country cottage, dominating 
 everything — and, in its inexorable grip 
 upon life, even destroying the very roof 
 which sustains it ! It reminds one of some 
 ifidomitable patriarch who imposes the 
 rigor of his rule upon the younger gener- 
 ation. Iniquitous, perhaps, from a strict- 
 ly ethical standard, but — dramatically 
 superb! 
 
 Perhaps the time will come when — 
 with finer senses — we will regard a gray- 
 beard with respect and admiration simply 
 because he is hoary: when we will not 
 
66 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 have to wait for a Rembrandt to inter- 
 pret the strength which is the fruit of 
 struggle and the repose which only fol- 
 lows conflict. And that exquisite fragility 
 which enfolds certain very, very old ladies, 
 like the exquisite withering that creeps 
 up through the thin petals of a Killar- 
 ney rose — this almost terrifying deli- 
 cacy which is as evanescently charming 
 as the flush of youth — when shall we 
 hurrying mortals find time to pause before 
 it, and to bow instinctively in its presence 
 as to the faint fragrance of incense in an 
 ancient church? 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 67 
 
 August 7 
 
 his morning, as I was working 
 in my little garden enclosure, 
 I heard sounds of merrymak- 
 ing in the lower meadow, and looking over 
 the white lattice, I saw my mother, as I 
 have seen her so many August times, in 
 the hay field with the men, laughing and 
 talking with animation as she raked the 
 fragrant windrows. There are many 
 women, like myself, who like to tinker 
 with a small garden plat; hut there are 
 few, perhaps, who so vividly appreciate 
 all Nature as a garden. To my mother 
 a field or hog, a sandy hill or a tangled 
 thatch of underhrush, each presents a 
 delightful and intimate prohlem of culti- 
 vation: and she is never so characteris- 
 tically herself as when she is actually 
 laboring with her two hands — such 
 pretty lady-hands that look shockingly 
 out of place wielding a rake or a hoe — 
 and, as she works, instructing and en- 
 couraging whatever miscellaneous assis- 
 
68 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 tants she may assemble in this hillside 
 country. 
 
 As I watch her this morning, I imag- 
 ine that I see a return of that unquench- 
 able buoyancy that has always distin- 
 guished her. YeSy she is more like her old 
 masterful self than she has been for a long, 
 long time. And yet — ah, now at this 
 moment, as she pauses and rests her chin 
 upon the wooden rake, a little wearily, I 
 see with a pang that little droop which 
 has crept gradually upon her of late. 
 Like the grass itself, — so resilient as it 
 meets the buffets of the gale, and so gay 
 under the smiting of the sun, — / have 
 always noticed her kinship with the ele- 
 mental children of Nature. Now, as I 
 stand here, looking down into the lower 
 meadow, a solemn rhythm beats unac- 
 countably in my ears. 
 
 ''All flesh is as grass — all flesh is as 
 grass, — and all the glory of man is as the 
 flower of grass. The grass wither eth and 
 the flower thereof falleth away — the grass 
 wither eth and the flower fadeth — but the 
 Word of the Lord endureth forever.'' 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 69 
 
 August 8 
 
 ^y little flowers in the latticed 
 \ window-how remind me of well- 
 trained children corralled be- 
 hind the bars of an ingenious nursery pen; 
 of birds caged up; of bedridden folk who 
 smile cheerfully from their open windows 
 at the passers-by on the street. They flour- 
 ish well — these pots of impatiens, agera- 
 tum, lantana, and geranium — although 
 the ageratum, like a consumptive invalid 
 in a pale-blue wrapper, is visibly wasting 
 away. But to have one's roots confined by 
 a pot; to be arbitrarily lifted above the 
 friendly level of the earth — well, though 
 one may bloom obediently, still, one has 
 memories — and possibly hopes — of a 
 dwelling more normal and less conspicu- 
 ous: lowlier and more intimate. 
 
70 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 August 9 
 
 have woven a ridiculous sort 
 of trellis of raffia from the win- 
 dow-box outside my bedroom 
 in the old windmill. And up it the morn- 
 ing-glories are merrily creeping. Now I 
 may lie in bed, and in the morning these 
 living trumpets will unfurl and blare forth 
 — in vibrations too delicate to be caught 
 by mortal sense — their salutation to the 
 dawn. 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 71 
 
 August io 
 
 lured my mother forth to gather 
 mushrooms with me this morn- 
 ing. We started out, across 
 the dewy fields, each with a basket swing- 
 ing from her arm. Over the rolling Cape 
 meadows — under the weather-beaten 
 fences, through ancient stiles — along 
 faintly worn footpaths which connect 
 one pasture with another. But it was not 
 until we came to the old hillside by the 
 pond, back of Rosemerry, that we achieved 
 our quest. And here we came upon a host 
 — in fairy rings and circles — in mysti- 
 cal groups and scattering numbers — hun- 
 dreds and hundreds of them, pushing their 
 way up through the dry, sandy soil into 
 the smiling light of day. 
 
 What is there so weird, so other-worldly 
 about these singular fungi? Like the 
 ghost-white yucca and the ominous In- 
 dian pipe that blackens in profane fingers ^ 
 they hauntingly suggest what might grow 
 in the gardens of the moon. Even their 
 
•^2 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 texture, slippery and yet subtly rough, 
 and their inexplicable coolness, like the 
 touch of a spectre. . . . 
 
 There were tight, hard, little ones, like 
 twinkling, white buds; tan, flat ones, glim- 
 mering close to the ground; darkened, 
 older ones withering, decaying; well- 
 developed ones — fully grown yet still 
 pink and firm, market size; and some, 
 too, of those seemingly goodly ones ''rot- 
 ten at the core'' with the worms of mor- 
 tality secretly feeding upon their hearts. 
 The same inevitable, irrevocable proces- 
 sion of youth, maturity, and decay that 
 makes up our whole concept of life ! Only 
 these with their blank pallor and clammy 
 smoothness were indefinably different — 
 reversed, in some impalpable way — as in 
 a looking-glass — whose apparently true 
 reflection sucks out all warmth from the 
 living image. As we bent down to pluck 
 them, we, too, seemed detached, unreal 
 to one another — like phantoms, gather- 
 ing strange fruit in the gardens of the 
 moon. 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 73 
 
 August ii 
 
 Ithough I have been watching^ 
 like an uneasy lover, for days 
 at the thatched eaves of the bal- 
 sam, yet this morning it was my mother 
 who discovered the shy, soft face below 
 the greenery. And together we welcomed 
 this dear blossom, so modestly enfolded 
 in her bonnet and shawl of pink. 
 
74 a garden rosary 
 
 August 12 
 
 he tall red tiger lilies, smartly 
 dotted with black and with their 
 petals crisply turned hack, arrest 
 attention, hut do not draw affection. They 
 give me the same vague sense of distrust 
 that used to creep through my veins when 
 — in my extreme youth — reading a 
 French novel that I did not understand, 
 the tawny-haired siren insinuated herself 
 into the plot of the story. 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 75 
 
 August 13 
 
 till clipping away the old and 
 the dead to give the striving 
 ^and youthful ones their place 
 in the sun. 
 
76 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 August 14 
 
 ome day, ivhen my nature has 
 reveled to satiety among the 
 brilliance and scent of gardens y 
 I shall seek an entrance into the quiet 
 dun-costumed sisterhood of grasses and 
 mosses. Leaving the gay foyer of painted 
 beauties I shall pitch my senses to a subtler 
 key, and knock gently upon the humble 
 door of wild weed, sedge, and fern. The 
 taste for etchings comes after the taste for 
 paintings. Refined by the grinding of ex- 
 perience, I shall grow to appreciate the 
 quiet grace of these slender forms — as a 
 voluptuary, turning from a ballroom, 
 might pause, hushed, before the passing 
 of a decorous file of charity children, with 
 meek, pure faces, and humble cloaks and 
 hoods. 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 77 
 
 August 15 
 
 [here has been a warm rain, and 
 puffballs are growing by the 
 path to the mill. With the aid 
 of half a dozen stakes and some string I 
 have built a little fence around them, to 
 protect them from any casual foot passen- 
 ger, and there they stand, '' swelli7ig wis- 
 ibly'' like chubby, phlegmatic children, 
 fattening on prepared food and penned 
 up in a warm nursery. There is some- 
 thing almost uncanny in the way they ex- 
 pand — almost doubling their size in 
 twenty -four hours. And yet it is more droll 
 than uncanny. For no matter how huge 
 they grow they never lose their infantile 
 irregularities of shape — like a fat boy, 
 who at forty still looks like a fat boy. 
 One would think that his moon features 
 would be the first to change and contract: 
 but they maintain their peculiar shape- 
 lessness more unyieldingly than many a 
 sharply chiseled physiognomy. So these 
 funny, solid, white puffballs, always 
 
78 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 exuding a faint chill perspiration, dilate 
 from small nubbins to great, watermelon 
 things, as big as one's head. Even when 
 they are sliced and fried in deep fat to a 
 most delectable brown, one still recognizes 
 those bland, full contours. Even cut and 
 poised upon a fork they wink at you bulb- 
 ously. Oh, the stupidity of mere tenacity f 
 And yet to many people it is the supremest 
 virtue I 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 79 
 
 August i6 
 
 he puniness of animal life! 
 How these Hessian hugs resist 
 and wrestle and kick as I pick 
 them off the calendulas! How trivial 
 and yet how supreme their final struggle 
 against me — a superior power. 
 
8o A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 August i8 
 
 happened to he passing hack of 
 the little shack on the hill to- 
 day, and I found a great com- 
 motion. The flowers which I have thrown 
 there from time to time were swarming 
 turhulently all over the place , quarreling 
 and laughing, like servants dismissed 
 from duty in the master's rooms, and 
 quartered in their own hall. 
 
 The golden glow had grown too rank 
 for any use. The mornijig- glory was 
 hugging a rosehush in a playful, yet ma- 
 licious grip. The rose had flung off her 
 two extra leaves ^ and reverted to wildness. 
 The trumpet vine had jumped up on the 
 roof, and, like a naughty hoy, was tug- 
 ghtg at the shingles. Even the mild-faced 
 clematis, who has always heen such a dig- 
 nified matron with white apron and cap, 
 was indulging in intimate conversation 
 with a vulgar wild carrot, that had had the 
 audacity to push its way in. All was con- 
 fusion and uproar and mishehavior. The 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 8l 
 
 privet, whom I had always seen a high and 
 haughty footman at the front door, was 
 ensnared into a flirtation with a French 
 maid — in the form of a scarlet bean, 
 who was slowly squeezing him to death, 
 while coquettishly tickling him. The 
 grass grew three feet high — untidy and 
 riotous — and a few poppies, that should 
 have been tending to business in my 
 lady's chamber, were dancing together, 
 hilariously. 
 
 Like a housekeeper who has emerged 
 from her own well-ordered apartments 
 and stumbled inadvertently upon a secret 
 revel belowstairs, I hastily withdrew. Im- 
 possible to get them in order, the wisest 
 course seemed to be to ignore the whole 
 affair. To-morrow, when I enter by the 
 front door instead of by the back, I shall 
 see the trumpet vine industriously clutch- 
 ing at the lattice provided for him by the 
 entrance gate; the rose will be meekly sub- 
 mitting to her engrafting in the garden; 
 and on the side porch the clematis will 
 appear serenely — as if she had never 
 consorted with jaunty, ill-bred weeds. 
 
82 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 When I see the privet standing stiffly by 
 the wall, and the morning-glory hastily 
 departing out of the bed — / shall pretend 
 that I never caught them at their carousal 
 back of the shed. 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 83 
 
 August 19 
 
 he woman who has a hireling 
 tend her beds, while she merely 
 sallies forth with a picturesque 
 basket and culls a few of the choicest blooms 
 for table decoration, misses that intimacy 
 with her garden that comes to those who 
 dig and delve with their own fingers and on 
 their knees. It is like having an excellent 
 governess for your children. She takes en- 
 tire charge of them, and permits you to 
 see them every afternoon, when they are 
 properly bathed and dressed, and ready for 
 a polite romp. Well-behaved children are 
 certainly delightful, as are fresh flowers 
 cut and placed in appropriate vases. But 
 there is an indescribable nearness of 
 knowledge that comes from bathing a 
 child, cutting its finger nails, brushing 
 its teeth, combing out its hair as fine as 
 floss, and pushing its funny little feet 
 into shoes that never seem made to hold 
 them. 
 
 So it is with a garden, when one has 
 
84 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 planted each seed with loving anticipa- 
 tion, welcomed its first appearance, wa- 
 tered, weeded, and tilled around its roots; 
 and finally, with triumph, cut the flower 
 and laid it upon the lap of the one we 
 love the best. 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 8=> 
 
 August 20 
 
 would as lief spend a morning 
 at the sewing-circle of a sub- 
 urban town as associate to any 
 extent with the cosmos. It is an exceed- 
 ingly nice flower: its foliage is feathery; 
 its color is pretty; its form is neat. But, 
 oh — what deadly conventionality ! 
 
 When I stand by the long row of per- 
 fectly well-planted, well-grown, and well- 
 flowered cosmos, I am always reminded 
 of those rows and rows of new and dainty 
 suburban houses; with their fresh cur- 
 tains and tamely clipped lawns and polite 
 porches; with their hygienically screened 
 perambulators carefully wheeled into the 
 shade; and with their young mistresses — 
 in fnodest and yet stylish uniformity of 
 costume — issuing forth to meet their 
 husbands, arriving from town on the five 
 o'clock train. As a matter of fact, they 
 are sweet and charming — these amiable 
 young couples. It is only because their 
 type is so precisely and endlessly re- 
 
86 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 peated that one wearies of them. Perhaps 
 if the cosmos would develop some trifling 
 variation of size or color or form, one 
 would feel a warmer interest in its af- 
 fairs. 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 87 
 
 August 21 
 
 y mother loves best the pink 
 Killarney rosey and long he- 
 \fore my day had a row of them 
 in the big vegetable garden, where they 
 associated with potatoes and corn with 
 the natural friendliness that always dis- 
 tinguishes real ladies in humble sur- 
 roundings. And, indeed, what more ex- 
 quisite product of nature's idealism and 
 man's cooperation than this exquisite 
 blossom, with its fine flesh and lines, 
 graceful without finickiness 7 There is a 
 strength and endurance about the Kil- 
 larney for all its delicacy. Doubtless it is 
 this sweet and vigorous unaffectiveness 
 that makes this rose dear to those who 
 have, lived long enough to divine the worth 
 of simplicity. 
 
88 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 August 23 
 
 he gladioli have hurst forth 
 \from their obscurity by the 
 
 barberry hedge, unexpectedly, 
 like gawky English school-girls who have 
 been unnoticed while they were growing 
 taller and taller. 
 
 I have always thought it a painjul 
 custom arbitrarily to thrust suddenly ma- 
 tured little girls into full-grown society 
 the moment they reach a certain age, and 
 expect them to take a comfortable and 
 gracious place in it. My ''debutantes'' 
 leaped into bright-lipped maturity with 
 equal unpreparedness, but I have found 
 it necessary to tie them up very severely 
 and trim their scraggliness into shape 
 before I consider them presentable. For in 
 spite of their gorgeous complexions they 
 are very awkward and lanky, and have 
 not grasped the first principles of po- 
 lite and well-poised carriage. 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 89 
 
 August 2'] 
 
 rose early this morning and 
 surreptitiously gathered a hig 
 bouquet of flowers to take to the 
 hospital, whither my mother and I must 
 go for a brief sojourn. Hoping to beguile 
 and surprise this dearest of friends, I care- 
 fully chose one blossom — sometimes more 
 — from every flowering plant. I picked 
 them with extreme discrimination, and put 
 them in a cool, dark place — well up to 
 their necks in water — until time for the 
 journey; like an anxious parent, prepar- 
 ing her little flock for a visit to the great city. 
 They bore the tedious journey well, al- 
 though they got a little tired before they 
 came to the end, hidden, as they were, 
 under the seat. But after I had untied 
 their 'wrappings and placed them with a 
 flourish in the various vases against the 
 tranquil gray wall of the hospital room, 
 they perked up their heads and looked 
 around, like inquisitive youngsters to my 
 mother's great surprise and delight. But 
 
90 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 alas — after the first hour the city air de- 
 pressed them. Naughty, selfish children 
 
 — who would not make an effort — they 
 hung their country heads and sulked I The 
 cosmos gasped for breath; the coreopsis 
 wrinkled up her clear forehead in irri- 
 tation and boredom; the larkspur was so 
 frightened that it grew pale. Even the 
 bachelor's button, who certainly cannot 
 plead fragility or temperamentality, be- 
 came limp. The phlox got a dirty face; 
 the poppies screwed their eyes shut; the 
 nasturtium tore her dress; the verbena slid 
 down into the water; the gaillardia refused 
 to smile; the balsam jumped out of her car- 
 riage and disappeared — goodness knows 
 where; and the rose, — like a weak, spoiled 
 darling, — merely because she was a lit- 
 tle fatigued, dropped everything wearily 
 
 — including her petals. 
 
 In vain I clipped and changed the 
 water and rearranged them. They fretted 
 and moped, and stood about with their 
 petticoats sagging and their hats over one 
 ear, until I was thoroughly out of patience 
 with them. Finally, like an exasperated 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 91 
 
 parent whose contrary offspring do the 
 very things she was hoping they would not 
 do, I scolded them loudly. But they only 
 wriggled down into the water more dis- 
 consolately than ever. As though this were 
 not humiliating enough, at this moment 
 the florist's hoy needs must enter with a 
 sheaf of magnificent gladioli — all pink 
 and fresh and crisp. Sophisticated, aris- 
 tocratic, well inured to city life and tem- 
 perature, how they towered disdainfully 
 above my peevish, slouching brood — who 
 are more accustomed to having their bare 
 feet in the country dirt and their faces 
 buffeted by salt winds than to being orna- 
 ments in a city hospital. 
 
 What a whimsical triviality it all was ! 
 And yet — for one terrible instant a cold 
 hand pressed on my heart when I saw how 
 powerless I was to confer even this pass- 
 ing pleasure upon the one I love . . . 
 when I saw my children — whom I my- 
 self had reared — obvious of their oppor- 
 tunity of giving joy to one whose joys 
 may be — alas — ah, alas — could it be 
 possible, — too briefly numbered. 
 
92 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 August 30 
 
 e have been away for several 
 days, and I find havoc on my 
 return. The entire garden has 
 taken advantage of my absence to mis- 
 behave. The impatiens has lost all her 
 flowers: the phlox has nt washed her face 
 or blown her nose since I went, and is 
 dirty as a pig. The candytuft and the 
 mignonette look as if they had been off 
 on a tour of dissipation, and the asters 
 — tidy older sisters on whom I bank 
 to maintain order — have fallen morbid 
 victims to the black beetle. The wily tiger 
 lily has doffed her smart clothes and 
 stands forth in black-spotted ugliness; 
 the hollyhock has degenerated into a fat 
 middle-aged pallor; the lazy poppies 
 have given up blooming, and the morning- 
 glories have raided the place. They are 
 literally strangling everything to death, 
 and laughing, like dainty blue-throated 
 fiends as they do it. It really is too dis- 
 couraging. Certainly children are a great 
 nuisance and a doubtful consolation. 
 
a garden rosary 93 
 
 August 31 
 
 he has come, the dear good 
 clematis — with her white mob 
 cap and ample white apron, 
 and her clean, wholesome mantle of fra- 
 grance. She is covering up the discrep- 
 ancies of the naughty flowers and the 
 idle plants, and is spreading her kind 
 flowering personality everywhere — per- 
 vasive, ge?itle, venerable. With a sigh of 
 gratitude I am giving the care of the floral 
 household over to her for a few days. 
 
94 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 September 4 
 
 y neat conventional suburb — 
 the cosmos community — has 
 slid, with shocking rapidity ^ 
 down the social scale. To-day I found 
 that the trim conventional settlement of a 
 short while ago had become completely 
 demoralized — as neighborhoods in a city 
 undergo swift and inexplicable trans- 
 formations. The dainty background of 
 green is getting shabby and brownish: 
 the fair-faced young brides who blossomed 
 forth so sweetly have become enormous y 
 short-limbed, old dowagers, slightly yel- 
 lowed with age; the young ladies who were 
 so pink and trig have grown into spindly j 
 sharp-colored spinsters. The younger gen- 
 eration is meager. No one has bothered 
 to clear up the street or even sweep the 
 porches. I instituted myself a board of 
 health and a property booster, and have 
 been carting away the debris: straighten- 
 ing out the tangle, and clearing things 
 up generally. Matters had got to such a 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 95 
 
 pass that I doubt if it will ever he a really 
 high-grade community again; hut, at any 
 rate, I have saved it from complete dis- 
 aster and am seeing to it that the young- 
 sters get proper attention and a chance^ 
 to grow up. 
 
96 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 September 7 
 
 have been looking over my so- 
 cial register, deciding whom I 
 shall invite to my garden party 
 next year. I have kept a careful record: 
 the lazy guests and the disagreeable ones 
 shall not be asked another time. Space is 
 too precious and time too valuable for any 
 but the most responsive. 
 
 Of course I shall keep the perennials: 
 one always keeps them, unless they com- 
 mit some unpardonable sin, just as one 
 always asks one^s relatives to family fes- 
 tivities. But as for the annuals — well 
 — they are goi?ig to be carefully selected 
 hereafter: I grow more exclusive in my 
 floral aspirations. Of course I shall ask 
 the poppies to come back: they have 
 danced with such gayety — such delir- 
 ious, frantic gayety all summer long, and 
 worn such festive dresses. The nastur- 
 tium, too, who is so obliging that we some- 
 times forget her charm, and her Spanish 
 grace of figure. The snapdragons have 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 97 
 
 been sullen and disagreeable and out 
 they go. They shall not come back at my 
 invitation. The bachelor's button can 
 come if he wants, but I shan't take any 
 special trouble to secure him. The salvia 
 dressed too outrageously and quarreled 
 with so many people that she must be 
 banned. I am rather tired of the calen- 
 dulas, too : in spite of their good nature they 
 are clumsy, vulgar things. But I shall find 
 a place for the little French ruffled mari- 
 golds. I think I shall arrange a row for 
 the meek-faced pansies. They are stupid, 
 and I have never asked them yet. But I 
 feel rather guilty about it, and think I 
 had better try them this once. The bal- 
 sam has been so freaky that I shall give 
 her a years vacation. The mignonette 
 and the lemon verbena shall have quiet 
 seats of honor. The zinnias have re- 
 sponded so gratefully to my courtesies 
 that they shall be invited; and the petmtias 
 — who did n't arrive in time this year — 
 will be given another chance. The asters, 
 too, will be invited en masse, and the 
 gladioli must have a bed to themselves. 
 
98 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 There are a few newcomers I want to en- 
 tertain next season: some Chinese prim- 
 roses and some nicotianas. 
 
 Thus I plan, although my mother, 
 whose long experience has made her kind- 
 er in her hospitality, warns me that such 
 exclusiveness may lead to poverty: that 
 when spring is actually upon me, she will 
 see me rush out into the highways and 
 byways and drag in all the old good-na- 
 tured standhys I have so snobbishly dis- 
 carded. But whatever humbleness I may 
 be forced to, at least I am planning for 
 a subdued and handsome display next 
 year, with dignified line and color and 
 proper relays of guests, so that there will 
 be no gaps or overcrowding. 
 
 Dreams, dreams, already dreams of 
 next year, while the guests of this year's 
 reception have not yet departed! 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 99 
 
 September 8 
 
 he only sin of which a flower is 
 capable is to lose its beauty. 
 
ICX) A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 September 9 
 
 utting a garden bed to rights 
 these days is like sweeping 
 and garnishing a house from 
 which one is soon to move away. It hardly 
 seems worth while, and yet the family 
 must he fed and put to bed and dressed 
 in the morning, even if food and bed- 
 clothes are soon to be packed away for 
 the winter. 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY lOI 
 
 September io 
 
 ear tinctures one's vision as a 
 drop of ink stains a whole ba- 
 sin of clear water. As a flock 
 of butterflies, which has been fluttering 
 over a field, flees before a sudden cold wind, 
 so my dancing flowers seem, to my fear- 
 sick eyes, to be affrighted by the strange 
 shadow that is creeping — creeping — 
 every day resistlessly nearer — over my 
 sky. Has the chill of the fear — the icy 
 dread — that has griped my heart, af- 
 fected them ? As I gaze at them through the 
 endless vista of agony that my imagina- 
 tion has swiftly built for me, they seem 
 frozen on their stems — ''stricken dumb 
 with a sense of that to come,'' 
 
I02 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 September ii 
 
 cannot tend the flowers. The 
 shadow of the vultures of fear 
 lies between me and my garden. 
 
 I am conscious only of the heavy flapping 
 
 of strange wings. 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 103 
 
 September 13 
 
 hey have plunged their beaks 
 into my flesh at last . . . these 
 evil birds of prey. We cannot 
 stay here any longer: we must go away 
 together y my mother and I. As I wander 
 hack and forth, waiting for the train that 
 will take us away, I see the little question- 
 ing faces of my flowers turned toward me. 
 But I cannot speak to them. I am envel- 
 oped in a heavy haze through which I 
 cmmot beat my way. 
 
I04 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 September 14 
 
 have left the garden on the hilU 
 side, a?id now sit all day long 
 beside the supreme flower of 
 Nature's creation — the Rose of all the 
 World. Like the other roses, her name- 
 sakes, she has bloomed with sitch superb 
 fullness that even those who love her best 
 cannot think of greater completion of 
 any human personality. And now — the 
 long brilliant season drawing to a close, 
 she, like them, is fading — soon to van- 
 ish from the weary stalk that has sus- 
 tained her so bravely and so gayly through 
 the storm and sunshine of her time. 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 105 
 
 September 17 
 
 he terror is leaving me. This 
 separation which seemed so 
 incredible and violent assumes 
 hut dignified garb of natural 
 The vultures are wheeling out of 
 sight. When Reality takes our hand the 
 fear bred of Imagination dissolves. 
 
 the sad 
 change. 
 
I06 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 September i8 
 
 oldenrod is burnishing the fields 
 on every hand. It knows no- 
 thing of the strange change that 
 has come across our lives. Oh, wise and 
 beautiful provision ! We should not want 
 the triumphant march of Autumn to 
 pause, or be for a moment darkened by 
 the shadow of our individual grief. 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 107 
 
 September 23 
 
 or the first time since we went 
 away together, I left her to- 
 day and journeyed hack the 
 long, long way to the garden on the hill- 
 side that she loved. I found them waiting 
 for me — the flowers — like hushed, af- 
 frighted children — and I told them, in 
 the language that they understand, that I 
 was going to take them to see her once 
 again. 
 
 With extreme care I selected the choic- 
 est blooms of those flowers that she loves 
 best. One of every kind, and here and 
 there an extra one for love. They seemed 
 to sense the impending calamity as they 
 lifted their faces meekly for my plucking. 
 Slowly, slowly I gathered them — through 
 a bitter gush of tears, and laid them with 
 sad gentleness in the big boxes. I carried 
 them in my arms to the station, and all 
 the long way back I clasped them close. 
 Mute messengers to the one I hold most 
 dear of all my earthly loves. Ah — mute- 
 ness is the only speech on such a journey. 
 
I08 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 September 24 
 
 he loves them all — and with 
 her dear weak fingers turns each 
 Jittle flowering face to hers. 
 What thoughts are passing through her 
 mind as she looks at these bright blossoms ? 
 I shall not know — until the day when I 
 lie as she is lying now^ with all the world 
 receding from me, forever. In that strange 
 evening y my heart shall hold communion 
 with the thoughts that now are hers — 
 and which she seems to share more inti- 
 mately with the flowers than with any 
 mortal. Already her communication has 
 taken on a finer vesture than that of 
 speech. Although she talks to us quite 
 freely — yet something has been whis- 
 pered in her ear in too pure, too high a 
 key for our gross senses to catch. And 
 she does not tell us what it was. 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 109 
 
 September 26 
 
 hey are coming to see her every 
 day — the lazy posies who 
 were so naughty on their first 
 visit to the hospital. Meekly they present 
 themselves before her now — eager to re- 
 trieve their past misdemeanors. Calen- 
 dulas, nasturtiums, mignonettes, — all 
 the pretty garden children, cluster thickly 
 about her bed and smile at her. Do they 
 know — / wonder — as she puts out her 
 thin hand — the pretty hand that has so 
 often scattered seeds and so rarely plucked 
 the blossoms — that they are gazing at her 
 for the last time? And is that why their 
 smile, like hers, is so brilliant and so 
 strangely beautiful? 
 
no A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 September 28 
 
 hen there is nothing that can he 
 said; when words fail, and 
 hands drop useless, and the 
 feet that would so gladly run stand idle — 
 then we poor human beings, in the ex- 
 tremity of our grief, turn to flowers. We 
 send them to the sick-room where we may 
 not go ourselves. People who have almost^ 
 forgotten that there is such a thing as a 
 flower, suddenly recall, in the time of 
 their affliction, this noiseless messenger 
 who can best carry their greeting to the one 
 about whom their thoughts are circling. 
 
 Thus, through our little community and 
 about our house there is silence. People 
 meeting on the street look sorrowfully up 
 at the drawn curtains in one bedroom win- 
 dow. They cannot speak for the tears in 
 their throats. But every day and all day 
 they send communications through a me- 
 dium more vocal than any other. Tall 
 gladioli come; roses with dew on them; 
 even the fringed gentian has left its shy 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY in 
 
 haunt to bring a gentle salutation from the 
 outer world. 
 
 And she, whose gayety was always akin 
 to the gayety of flowers — she understands 
 — understands with the directness of one 
 who has been close to nature in all its 
 forms, and whose senses are now exquis- 
 itely refined by suffering. 
 
112 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 September 29 
 
 appy visitors as well as stately 
 ones come to the sick-room 
 these days: petunias standing 
 jocularly in a basket of ripe tomatoes; 
 red dahlias, russet apples — a pumpkin, 
 even, with an orange ribbon about its neck; 
 and all the rest of the sturdy autumn crew. 
 And why not ? It is our last chance to be 
 gay together as well as our last chance to 
 weep. And surely laughter is a truer trib- 
 ute to her than tears. A sense of joy rather 
 than of mourning must always be part of 
 our remembrance of her. She does not 
 want whispering nor doleful looks in her 
 presence. She loves to hear the sounds 
 of cheerful family life below stairs. One 
 knows she would not want long streamers 
 of crepe to flutter at her passing, nor ''let 
 their laughter cease, remembering me,'' 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY I13 
 
 October i 
 
 he woodbine has flattened itself 
 out against the window and 
 made a perfect tracery against 
 the pane. I see her eyes resting on it often 
 with a glow of pleasure. Its fine bright 
 color and its nicety of outline make it as 
 beautiful as any Japanese etching on a 
 piece of transparent parchment. 
 
114 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 October 2 
 
 he doorbell rang this morning 
 and I ran down to find at the 
 front steps a group of children 
 from the kindergarten — bringing with 
 them nasturtiums of their own planting 
 and gathering in a basket of their own 
 making. Although she was asleep I wak- 
 ened her. Friendly sleep will claim her 
 all too soon — for a time longer and an 
 oblivion kinder than we can gauge with 
 our poor instruments. To-day we will 
 beg a little more of her precious presence. 
 I led the children in — ten of them — 
 and they stood about her bed in awed 
 silence, their flowers in their hands. What 
 did they see, those wondering midgets? 
 Only the vague impression of a sick lady, 
 lying in a wide white bed — looking at 
 them with eyes large, blue and mystically 
 piercing. And what did she see ? I think 
 she saw in those small faces the earnest of 
 perpetual youth — perpetual progress — 
 of life going on; of seeds coming into 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 115 
 
 flower; of harvests bringing forth fruit; 
 the repetition of the cycle, forever. 
 
 Her 'psychic gaze traveled from little 
 face to little face. She asked their names 
 and nodded as she saw in these minia- 
 tures resemblances to father or grand- 
 father she had known. And then, as her 
 eyes fell upon the bright splash of color 
 in the basket, they filled with gleaming 
 tears. Flowers too — going on — coming 
 into blossom — seed-time and maturity 
 — going on — on — life going on ... I 
 think this is what she saw. 
 
Il6 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 October 3 
 
 watch the daily dissolution 
 of a human body is to read in 
 unforgettable letters the history 
 of all physical life. There is only the dif- 
 ference of degree between death as it 
 steals over a mortal frame and death as it 
 withers a flower on its stem. But no. The 
 flowers die painlessly. For us, the tear- 
 ing down of our tissues and the wasting 
 away of our flesh is full of agony. Surely 
 the unfathomable thing that makes us dif- 
 ferent from the animals and the flowers 
 and all other creations of Nature must be 
 responsible for this difference. How else 
 can we account for pain as we know it, 
 and as the vegetable world knows it not ? 
 But why should not our superior endow- 
 ment make us immune to the ultimate 
 pangs, instead of rendering us more sus- 
 ceptible to them ? 
 
a garden rosary i17 
 
 October 4 
 
 utumn! — with the harvest be- 
 ing gathered into the hams, and 
 with the flowers which are the 
 handsomest of all the year standing bright- 
 ly in their garden beds! What more fit- 
 ting time to be gathered to rest, after a full 
 season of fruitf nines s ? As she lies upon 
 her bed, and sees standing before her the 
 five stalwart men and women she has 
 borne, there is something in her counte- 
 nance that reminds me of a majestic field 
 from which an ample harvest has been 
 taken. 
 
 In such primitive moments as these, 
 we feel our kinship to the natural beasts 
 and the prolific meadows: and surely 
 earthly life is most easily relinquished 
 when we have satisfied the laws of earth. 
 I feel, as she lies here, with the autumn 
 pastures stretching out on every hand, 
 that she, like them, is content, nor does 
 she ''envy the field its fatherhood.'' 
 
Il8 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 October 5 
 
 stood by the window to-day and 
 watched them digging up the 
 gladioli bulbs and stowing them 
 away for the winter. With all the au- 
 tumn foliage fading fast^ and even the 
 gladioli vanishing^ I like to remember 
 the pretty Japanese custom of taking 
 down pictures after they have delighted 
 the spectators for a certain period, rolling 
 them up and putting them away, until 
 the season returns when it shall be proper 
 to rehang them: an unconscious homage 
 to the beautiful law of recurrence. 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY II9 
 
 October 6 
 
 went riding to-day down the 
 splendid aisles of autumn car- 
 pets and autumn banners. I 
 saw them all: the apples on the trees; the 
 pumpkins against the hams; the salvia 
 and cosmos in the garden beds; and the 
 *' happy autumn fields'' on every side. 
 But they spoke nothing to me. My heart 
 was full of grief because she could not see 
 it, too. What comfort to believe that she 
 — like the sleeping children '' saw fairer 
 in her dreams.'' I longed, intensely, 
 with strong human longing, for her eyes 
 to rest with mine, at that very moment, 
 on those special sights. Alas — what 
 longing shall be in the future, when, on 
 returning home, I cannot even speak to 
 her of what I have seen and heard ! 
 
I20 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 October 8 
 
 hey have sent her a Killarney 
 from the garden on the distant 
 hillside J and I have placed it 
 in a tall glass vase beside her bed. Ah — 
 strange times, when even this pale, fragile 
 thing may outlive her who planted it! 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 121 
 
 October 9 
 
 ate this afternoon, as I sat in 
 the sick-room, I remembered 
 this night a year ago. We 
 thought there was going to he a frost, and 
 hastily running out into the twilight, we 
 gathered a great basketful of flowers. 
 How bright and hardy they looked — a 
 great tumbled pile of them. Never was 
 the larkspur bluer or the pink rambler 
 roses pinker than then. Lavender cam- 
 panulas; heliotrope breathing out a last 
 intense fragrance; cosmos, bland-faced 
 and mild; bachelor's buttons almost ill- 
 temperedly blue, Down in the lower gar- 
 den a single Killarney bared her bosom 
 to the moon like some fair society girl en 
 decolletee, glowing into pink in a chilly 
 drawing-room. Honeysuckle — remem- 
 brancer of summer — clung on the lattice 
 of the porch. The calendulas — sturdy 
 bourgeoisies — hardly noticed the com- 
 ing cold. And, tight and impervious, the 
 French marigolds ruffled their little 
 
122 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 orange-colored collars about their faces ^ 
 and prepared for a siege. What we could 
 not gather we covered, hoping to save them 
 for '' one more day'* . . . *' one more day,'' 
 she said, although we knew they must go 
 soon. 
 
 One more day — to-night — / whisper 
 it to myself, knowing now, as then, that 
 this flower must, like those other flowers, 
 go soon , . , so soon. 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 123 
 
 October io 
 
 othing hut roses have been sent 
 to her on this last day of all 
 \her earthly days. Rich and fine 
 with their perfume and their subtle, fleet- 
 ing color, they are indeed her flowers. 
 They are standing — oh, so still in that 
 still room. Their fragrance is their prayer. 
 
124 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 October 12 
 
 e have brought her hack to the 
 place she loved the best, and 
 placed her on the hillside, over- 
 looking the lily pond and the garden, 
 under the protection of a giant oak, whose 
 immemorial branches make a shelter 
 above her head. 
 
 There is a path that leads from the 
 door step y over which she welcomed so 
 many friends ^ to the very spot where she 
 lies, and along this path will always 
 bloom flowers. The friendly grasses will 
 whisper over her, and the sky will spread 
 a canopy not too vast for that ample spirit. 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 125 
 
 October 14 
 
 cannot imagine how she can he 
 getting on without me. ''She is 
 in heaven,'' saintly folk, upon 
 whose aged faces sorrow has furrowed 
 infinite and softening traces, assure me, 
 with trembling voices. But even if she he, 
 how she must miss, every hour, and 
 cruelly, the ministrations that only I 
 could give. And if she is lying under the 
 oak tree on the hillside, she must be 
 lonely, for all the flowers they strewed 
 upon the path and laid above her are 
 withered by now. I cannot go to her. Nay, 
 even if I went, and stretched myself up- 
 on the grave and called aloud to her, she 
 would not answer. She, who always 
 heard my softest whisper, who would un- 
 derstand my thought before I uttered it — 
 now answers nothing, and never will 
 again. ... ''Ah, light of mine eyes, 
 what gift shall I send thee? What gift to 
 that other world? The apple rots, and 
 the quince decay eth, and one by one they 
 
126 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 perish, the petals of the rose. I send thee 
 my tears, hound up in a napkin, and 
 what though the napkin hums, if my 
 tears reach thee at last?'' 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 127 
 
 October i8 
 
 here is something unanswerable 
 in sheer physical emptiness. 
 I see the great rough hole from 
 which some master tree was torn, and I 
 stand before it, appalled. Time will heal 
 the gaping void; earth will sift down into 
 it; grass will find a foothold; even violets 
 may grow there. And let us agree, for 
 comfort's sake, that the wood is already 
 being brought into a nobler use. But do 
 those assurances assuage the suffering 
 soil, exposed to the stark elements? 
 
 Wounds mend; something comes into 
 daily life or life attaches itself elsewhere^ 
 . . . True. But until then . . , ? 
 
128 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 October 20 
 
 5 / walked across the meadows 
 this evening, the wild carrot, 
 dying of chill, caught at my 
 skirt with myriad skinny fingers. Like 
 withered old ladies, hugging their dingy 
 lace around them, they shivered in the 
 hreeze. I stood in their trembling midst, 
 and it seemed to me that I saw the figure 
 of Mrs. Skewton as I used to imagine her 
 in my childhood days — lean and eager, 
 clutching with feeble insistence at that 
 proud daughter of hers — Edith Dombey. 
 She who, passing by iridifferently, paused 
 for a moment in her imperious career, 
 irritated and yet touched by the pathetic, 
 despicable appeal of unlovely old age. 
 
 So sometimes, when I see the wrinkled 
 faces of those whose days go on with slow, 
 dull pulse, and think of the sparkle and 
 bravery of her who had so much to give, 
 depression saps my faith. 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 129 
 
 October 25 
 
 here is comfort in the mere com- 
 pletion of any course. The ten- 
 der bluets, dotting the spring 
 pastures and trampled in the mud hy care- 
 less feet, are pitiable. The rose eaten by 
 a worm is horrible. The storm which 
 beats the breath from a gasping flower, or 
 an accident which cuts it down in bud, or 
 a blight which poisons it — these are 
 tragedies. But how can we, creatures of 
 Nature and part of her irrevocable scheme, 
 rebel when one who had flowered bril- 
 liantly and scattered its seeds with 
 generosity, reaching the end of its season, 
 faded gently from our sight? 
 
I30 A GARDEN ROSARY 
 
 October 2^] 
 
 late Killarney rose — the flower 
 that she loved best — has blos- 
 somed beside the doorstep. I 
 cut it, and holding it in my hand, exam- 
 ined the smooth texture and delicate 
 fashioning of the petals. What a master- 
 piece of evolution I We, for all our tedious 
 experiments and struggling with the 
 sciences, can never imitate nor even ex- 
 plain this innocent mystery. Whatever 
 we know or believe, it is evident beyond 
 question that some supreme Power regu- 
 lates the development of even this one rose. 
 It comes to bud and blossom in the time 
 appointed for it. It adheres to the line 
 and color of those Killarneys that have 
 gone before it. There is some law govern- 
 ing this flower — this trifling transient 
 blossom. The same Power that is immense 
 enough to control the course of the stars 
 and planets is also gauged fine enough to 
 guard the life of a rose. How shall we, 
 with our puny intellects and our frantic 
 
A GARDEN ROSARY 131 
 
 emotions, dare to say that the same Power 
 does not order the course of every human 
 life, in the way most rightful and inevit- 
 able? 
 
132 a garden rosary 
 
 November i 
 
 0-day I have gone out and 
 planted bulbs for spring. I 
 drove my fingers into the earth, 
 — that same earth that now encircles her 
 and will for evermore, — and pressed in 
 the hard dry buds that, by the miracle of 
 Nature, will bring forth in the spring cro- 
 cuses, scilla, and daffodils. 
 
 Yes, even with those white curtained 
 windows looking down upon me, — win- 
 dows that open into what will be for me, 
 as long as I live, an empty room, — / 
 planted bulbs for another springtime — 
 for another springtime. . . . 
 
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
 U . S . A