things were wrong, and that having a pleasant place to walk about in out of doors would encourage idle and lawless ways in the young; at any rate, for several years it was more necessary to raise corn and potatoes to keep themselves from starving than to lay out alleys and plant flowers and box borders among the rocks and stumps.  There is a great pathos in the fact that in so stern and hard a life there was time or place for any gardens at all.  I can picture to myself the little slips and cuttings that had been brought over in the ship, and more carefully guarded than any of the household goods; I can see the women look at them tearfully when they came into bloom, because nothing else could be a better reminder of their old home.  What fears there must have been lest the first winter’s cold might kill them, and with what love and care they must have been tended!  I know a rose-bush, and a little while ago I knew an apple-tree, that were brought over by the first settlers; the rose still blooms, and until it was cut down the old tree bore apples.  It is strange to think that civilized New England is no older than the little red roses that bloom in June on that slope above the river in Kittery.  Those earliest gardens were very pathetic in the contrast of their extent and their power of suggestion and association.  Every seed that came up was thanked for its kindness, and every flower that bloomed was the child of a beloved ancestry.

It would be interesting to watch the growth of the gardens as life became easier and more comfortable in the colonies.  As the settlements grew into villages and towns, and the Indians were less dreadful, and the houses were better and more home-like, the busy people began to find a little time now and then when they could enjoy themselves soberly.  Beside the fruits of the earth they could have some flowers and a sprig of sage and southernwood and tansy, or lavender that had come from Surrey and could be dried to be put among the linen as it used to be strewn through the chests and cupboards in the old country.

I like to think of the changes as they came slowly; that after a while tender plants could be kept through the winter, because the houses were better built and warmer, and were no longer rough shelters which were only meant to serve until there could be something better.  Perhaps the parlor, or best room, and a special separate garden for the flowers were two luxuries of the same date, and they made a noticeable change in the manner of living,—­the best room being a formal recognition of the claims of society, and the front yard an appeal for the existence of something that gave pleasure,—­beside the merely useful and wholly necessary things of life.  When it was thought worth while to put a fence around the flower-garden the respectability of art itself was established and made secure.  Whether the house was a fine one, and its inclosure spacious, or whether it was a small house with only a narrow