hat the garden stood
for--what it expressed--left a mysterious but certain impress.
Grandmother's touch hallowed it and made it a thing apart, and the rare
soul of her seemed to be reflected in the Lilies of the Valley that
bloomed sweetly year by year in the shady plot under her favorite
window in the sitting-room. Because the garden was her special
province, it expressed her own sturdy, kindly nature. Little wonder,
then, that we cherished it; that I loved to roam idly there feeling the
enfoldment of that same protection and loving-kindness which drew me to
the shelter of her gingham-aproned lap when the griefs of Boyhood
pressed too hard upon me; and that we walked in it so contentedly in
the cool of the evening, after the Four O'clocks had folded their
purple petals for the night.

Grandmother's garden, like all real gardens, wasn't just flowers and
fragrance.

There was a brick walk leading from the front gate to the sitting-room
entrance--red brick, all moss-grown, and with the tiny weeds and
grasses pushing up between the bricks. In the garden proper the paths
were of earth, bordered and well-defined by inch-wide boards that
provided jolly tight-rope practice until grandmother came anxiously out
with her oft-repeated: "Willie don't walk on those boards; you'll,
break them down." And just after the warm spring showers these
earthwalks always held tiny mud-puddles where the rain-bleached worms
congregated until the robins came that way.

There's something distinctive and individual about the paths in a
garden--they either "belong," or they do not. Imagine cement walks in
grandmother's garden! Its walks are as much to a garden as its flowers
or its birds or its beetles, and express that dear, indescribable
intimacy that makes the Phlox a friend and the Johnny-Jump-Up a
play-fellow.

* * * * *

The best place for angle-worms was underneath the white Syringa
bush--the tallest bloomer in the garden except the great Red Rose that
climbed over the entire wall of the house, tacked to it by strips of
red flannel, and whose blossoms were annually counted and reported to
the weekly newspaper.

Another good place was under the Snowball bush, where the ground was
covered with white petals dropped from the countless blossom-balls that
made passers-by stop in admiration.

Still another good digging-ground was in the Lilac corner where the
purple and white bushes exhaled their incomparable perf