erly, of
course, lower than those farther back, I see among them, in this dream,
the evergreen box and several kinds of evergreen ferns. I see two or
three species of evergreen barberries, not to speak of Thunberg's
leafless one warm red with its all-winter berries, the winter garden's
rubric. I see two varieties of euonymus; various low junipers; two sorts
of laurel; two of andromeda, and the high-clambering evergreen ivy.
Beginning with these in front, infrequent there but multiplying toward
the place's rear, are bush and tree forms of evergreen holly, native
rhododendrons, the many sorts of foreign cedars and our native ones
white and red, their skyward lines modified as the square or pointed
architecture of the house may call for contrasts in pointed or
broad-topped arborescence. If, at times, I dream behind all this a
grove, with now and then one of its broad, steepling or columnar trees
pushed forward upon the lawn, it is only there that I see anything so
stalwart as a pine or so rigid as a spruce.

Such is the vision, and if I never see it with open eyes and in real
sunlight, even as a dream it is--like certain other things of less
dignity--grateful, comforting. I warrant there are mistakes in it, but
you will find mistakes wherever you find achievement, and there is no
law against them--in well-meant dreams. Observe, if you please, this
vision lays no drawback on the garden's summer beauty and affluence.
Twelve months of the year it enhances its dignity and elegance. Both the
numerical proportions of evergreens to other greens, and the scheme of
their distribution, are quite as correct and effective for contrast and
background to the transient foliage and countless flowers of July as
amid the bare ramage of January. Summer and winter alike, the gravest
items among them all, the conifers, retain their values even in those
New Orleans gardens. When we remember that in New England and on all its
isotherm it is winter all that half of the year when most of us are at
home, why should we not seek to realize this snow-garden dream? Even a
partial or faulty achievement of it will surely look lovelier than the
naked house left out on its naked white lawn like an unclaimed trunk on
a way-station platform. I would not, for anything, offend the reader's
dignity, but I must think that this midwinter garden may be made at
least as much lovelier than no garden as Alice's Cheshire cat was
lovelier--with or without its grin--tha