The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1874-10-29
THE PRESS S,
THURSDAY MORNING, OCT. 20. ~
The Old Garden.

IHe ordinary cltZen nurrylng through tne
squares in these late October days gives ro
more heed to the whirling yellow maple
leaves blown across his path than to the
whirlng dust, and turns from the frosty
blaze over the tall roofs at sunset to lcok at a
cherry-cheeked schoolgirl going by. But
Nixon, who returned only north ago from
his vacation to take charge of his city church,
finds the burning leaves and Indian summer
sky waken in him sort of homesickness for
out OF doors, a woods-calenture. He takes
two of the children, and, under the pretense
of "seeing the old folks" runs up to the
country village where he was born. He is a
little tired of the heated discussion among the
members about the new carpet in the aisles,
and his soul is vexed and angry within him
at the squabblings of the Episcopal Conven-
tiOn and the scandals in the Plymouth and
Jersey City churches. c His own flock are
neither Episcopalians nor Presbyterians. y
He is appalled, at the amount OF suffering
coming in this hard winter to the masses of
hungry, unemployed poor, and at the luxury
and lack of sympathy among the rich that
crowd the front pews. He thinks of the old
innocent friendly life of his childhood in the
hill village, and fancies if he could escape to
its purer atmosphere and Arcadian simple.
hearted people he would be strengthened for
the vice and vulgarity of the city, ~.
But the village disappoints him. He is a,
great man now; the Squire and the Doctor
and the candidate for Congress from that
"deestrect" come to call on him, and call
daily and nightly thereafter. Their voices
are shril and stridulous. They lay down
the law upon their county politics, and il
lustrate by nasty jokes, and close the matter
up to begin it all over again. The "Betseys
and Annes and Ezas," who were his old
sweethearts in those moonlit ewes of yore.
ask him to tea. They wear black false fronts
and gay caps, and their talk is of picking
and corning beef, with relish of the Tilton
scandal. Their daughters come to call on
his shy, soft-voiced little Lucy, and are gor-
geous in ''the latest New York styles" The
people are Arcadian and simple-hearted, Just
as he thought them; but the intolerance, the
petty ambitions, the crudeness and narrow
ness of ideas, to which he had been blind as
boy, shock and appal him. Presently he
goes out into the old garden. 1t fills such a
vast beautiful space in his childhood! 1t is,
he sees now, but narrow, ill-cared for strip,
IL by 30 feet. But there are the dusky rows
OF damson plum trees, whose branches used
to lie on the ground heavy with the little pur-
pie fruit; and there are the celery beds
which Ben called the Hmalayan Mountains.
That was just after they "went into' geogra-
ply, but before they were through the book
Ben died. He remembers how he could not
took him to see, for wondering how they ever
had made Ben's hands so clean, and why
they put flannel gown on him instead of
trowsers. Afterward, when he took his sled
out to slide down the Himalayans alone, he
cried to himself bitterly enough. And there
was the great mass of privet and Italian will
low growing over the wooden seat which Just
held two. One night he had sat there with
= No matterl II was not the children's
mother. These early loves and friendships
were like the dreams he used to have lying
on the grass yonder under the old cherry tree
when he came, young fellow, home from
college. Love and dreams and ambitions
shrunken and withered like this narrow strip
of garden-bed between two fences, which was
once all the world to him! g.flta5 .lf
Yet there still comes queer, unaccounta-
bic pleasure to him, softening of his disci-
plined heart, a half wrench of pain in it at
the sights and smells of the old garden, which
never reached him in all the wonders of for
eign travel. He draws quicker breath
when he finds the old asparagus bed unal-
tered, and haunted still by the gigantic race
of spiders, red and yellow, which were the
terror OF his childhood. He goes out just af-
ter dawn, and finds hoar-fr0st, edging with
pearl the massed green clover; whitening the
REDEEMED leaves of the rose-b bushes and their
yellow seed-vessels, and glittering over the
ruby berries OF the hOneySuckleS. A strange
delight at the beauty OF it ALL fills his eyes
with sudden tears. Yet ordinarily he cares
nothing for beauty in art or nature. He is
glad, too, when Bob, his boy, comes in just
as he used to do, on fire with triumph at
finding dozen hens eggs, or ''reckons that
stone spring-house was something like the
house Jack found the Giant Corraoran in."
He goes down in the dusk to look for Lucy
and spies her seated on the bench, which
holds but two, with young Horseley,, who
has followed them up from town. 1t Is cold
and the privet overhead drops bright leaves
on th9m, but their cheeks are warm as
though it were midsummer. IN
He goes softly away, plucking late rose
from leafiess bush. 1t is the very rose
which his mother used to be so fond of, pin
ming bud in her bosom every morning. He
knows the bush, and the old spicy perfume
She is dead long ago; her very bones are dust.
Something of the fragrance of the flower will
soften his sermons against the evils Of the
time when he goes back to town. For it
seems to him just now somehow that the
evils, vulgarity, scandal, crime, death itself
are only for a day, but that the chilRs
thought and the roses and love bloom freshly
together from year to year and generation to
generation.-N. Y. Tribune.