protection of a fence to a
degree of which the well-to-do know nothing. In the common interest of
the whole community, of any community, the poor man--the poor
woman--ought to have a garden; but if they are going to have a garden
they ought to have a fence. We in Northampton know scores of poor homes
whose tenants strive year after year to establish some floral beauty
about them, and fail for want of enclosures. The neighbors' children,
their dogs, their cats, geese, ducks, hens--it is useless. Many refuse
to make the effort; some, I say, make it and give it up, and now and
then some one wins a surprising and delightful success. Two or three
such have taken high prizes in our competition. The two chief things
which made their triumph possible were, first, an invincible passion for
gardening, and, second, poultry-netting.

A great new boon to the home gardener they are, these wire fencings and
nettings. With them ever so many things may be done now at a quarter or
tenth of what they would once have cost. Our old-fashioned fences were
sometimes very expensive, sometimes very perishable, sometimes both.
Also they were apt to be very ugly. Yet instead of concealing them we
made them a display, while the shrubbery which should have masked them
in leaf and bloom stood scattered over the lawn, each little new bush by
itself, visibly if not audibly saying--

"You'd scarce expect one of my age----"

etc.; the shrubs orphaned, the lawn destroyed.

If the enclosure was a hedge it had to be a tight one or else it did not
enclose. Now wire netting charms away these embarrassments. Your hedge
can be as loose as you care to have it, while your enclosure may be
rigidly effective yet be hidden from the eye by undulating fence-rows;
and as we now have definite bounds and corners to plant out, we do not
so often as formerly need to be reminded of Frederick Law Olmsted's
favorite maxim, "Take care of the corners, and the centres will take
care of themselves."

[Illustration: Fences masked by shrubbery.

One straight line of Williston Seminary campus, the effect of whose iron
fence before it was planted out with barberry may be seen in the two
panels of it still bare on the extreme right.]

Here there is a word to be added in the interest of home-lovers, whose
tastes we properly expect to find more highly trained than those of the
average tenant cottager. Our American love of spaciousness leads us to
fancy that--not to-day or to-