the side next the house the edge between the walk and the planted border
should run parallel with the base line of the house, for these are
business lines and therefore ever so properly lines of promptitude--of
the shortest practicable distance between two points--lines of supply
and demand, lines of need. For lines of need, business speed!

But for lines of pleasure, grace and leisure. It is the tactful office
of this shrubbery border to veil the business path from the lawn--from
the pleasure-ground. Therefore its _outside_, lawn-side edge should be a
line of pleasure, hence a line of grace, hence not a straight line (dead
line), nor yet a line of but one lethargic curve, but a line of suavity
and tranquil ongoing, a leisurely undulating line.

[Illustration: "The rear walk ... follows the dwelling's ground contour
with business precision--being a business path."]

Not to have it so is an error, but the error is an inoffensive one
easily corrected and the merit is that the dwelling's business path is
greenly, bloomingly screened from its pleasure-ground by a lovely
natural drapery which at the same time furnishes, as far as the path
goes, the house's robes of modesty. Indeed they are furnished farther
than the path goes; for no good work gathers momentum more readily than
does good gardening, and the householder, having begun so rightly, has
now nothing to do to complete the main fabric of his garden but to carry
this flow of natural draperies on round the domicile's back and
farther side and forward to its front again. Thus may he wonderfully
extenuate, even above its reach and where it does not conceal, the
house's architectural faults, thus winsomely enhance all its
architectural charm; like a sweet human mistress of the place, putting
into generous shadow all the ill, and into open sunshine all the best,
of a husband's strong character. (See both right and left foreground of
illustration on page 178, and right foreground on page 180.)

And now if this New Orleans idea--that enough private enclosure to
secure good home gardening is not incompatible with public freedom,
green lawns, good neighborship, sense of room and fulness of
hospitality, and that a house-lot which is a picture is worth more to
everybody (and therefore is even more democratic) than one which is
little else than a map--if this idea, we say, finds any credence among
sister cities and towns that may be able to teach the Creole city much
in other