^-^•^ ^nf '/,] THE HIRSCHWALD "^ THE riiBNNE'BER^FCT company CHICAGO NEWJORK^ ** Beautiful! *' Beautiful? with the hoe. "They're roses," I protested. "Wonderful great green roses. " A mass of grey, bluish green extended on and on toward a bank of purple clouds which seemed to unite it to the golden orange of the gor- geous September sunset. I stood and feasted my ^y\ \ eyes on this poem in color, wondering if the old gar- ^9J/f' dener has a soul. Yes, and so have thousands of others, but they are sleeping; sleeping away life's legacy, the power to enjoy the beauties of this world. Not so with Elizabeth ; the dandelion shared her love with the rose, and by her chronicles she threw open the gates of her garden that the world might enter. I have tried to capture, in black and white, the spirit of her paradise so that as you turn from page to page you will pass from flower to flower, down the walks of the enchanted land, that you may stand with her beside the sun dial when the rooks come circling home and listen to their love-notes of "Caw, Caw" as they call good night. If I have, with my illustrations, helped the text to bring back to mem- ory happy hdurs gone by, of days you too spent in a garden, then— "Wilderness were Paradise enow. " Oll^i^ i4- >:t 272041 §1 t Elizabeth and Her German Garden. This is less a garden than a wilderness. No one has lived in the house, much less in the gar- den, for twenty-five years, and it is such a pretty old place that the people w^ho might have lived here and did not, deliberately preferring the horrors of a flat in a town, must have belonged to that vast number of eyeless and earless persons of whom the world seems chiefly composed. JSToseless too, though it does not sound pretty ; but the greater part of my spring happiness is due to the scent of the wet earth and young leaves. I am always happy (out of doors, be it under- stood, for indoors there are servants and furni- /^^. ture), but in quite different ways, and my spring M^ happiness bears no resemblance to my summer ^%4i\ or autumn happiness, though it is not more in- ' tense, and there.were days last winter when I danced for sheer joy out in my frost-bound gar- den in spite of my years and children. But I did it behind a bush, having a due regard for the decencies. There are so many bird-cherries around me, great trees with branches sweeping the grass, and they are so wreathed just now with white T gl> '^ -^i;^ m^: \ Elizabeth and Her German Garden. ^.-r^^/.TO-v. . blossoms and tenderest green, that the garden ^g^^^^ looks like a wedding. I never saw such masses of them ; they ^seemto fill the place. Even across a little stream V that bounds the garden on the east, and right in the middle of the cornfield be- yond, there is an immense one, a picture of grace and glory against the cold blue of the spring sky. My garden is surrounded by cornfields and meadows, and beyond are great stretches of sandy heath and pine forests, and where the for- ests leave off the bare heath begins again ; but the forests are beautiful in their lofty, pink- stemmed vastness, for overhead the crowns of softest gray-green, and underfoot a bright green whortleberry carpet, and everywhere the breath- less silence ; and the bare heaths are beautiful g^ii-vv^^^p^j. too, for one can see across them into eternity ^^i^^^^ almost, and to go out onto them with one's face toward the setting sun is likegoiijg into the very presence of God. In the middle of this plain is the oasis of bird- cherries and greenery where I spend my happy days, and in the middle of the oasis is the gray stone house with many gables where I pass my reluctant nights. The house is very old, and has LIVE IN PARADISE ALOti^ Tiws^m Elizabeth and Her ' been added to at various times. It was a con- vent before the Thirty Years' War, and the vaulted chapel, with its brick floor worn by pious peasant knees, is now used as a hall. Gus- tavus Adolphus and his Swedes passed through more than once, as is duly recorded in archives still preserved, for we are on what was then the i highroad between Sweden and Brandenburg the unfortunate. The Lion of the Korth was no doubt an estimable person and acted wholly up to his convictions but he must have sadly upset the peaceful nuns, who were not with- out convictions, of their own, sending them out onto the wide, empty -plain to piteously seek some life to replace the life of silence here. From nearly all the windows of the house I can look out across the plain, with no obstacle in the shape of a hill, right away to a blue line of distant forest, and on the west side uninter- ruptedly to the setting sun — nothing but a green, rolhng plain, with a sharp edge against the sun- set. I love those west windows better than any others, and have chosen my bedroom on that side of the house so that even times of hair-brushing may not be entirely lost ; and the young woman ■^' K_7=-r .^ i T Elizabeth and Her German Garden. ^'^ who attends to such matters has been taught to fulfill her duties about a mistress recumbent in an easy-chair before an open window, and to not profane with chatter that sweet and solemn time. This girl is grieved at my habit of living / almost in the garden, and all her ideas as to the ^^ sort of life a respectable German lady should lead have got into a sad muddle since she came tome. The people round about are persuaded that I am, to put it as kindly as possible, exceedingly eccen- X trie for the news has traveled that I spend the day out of doors with a book, and that no mortal eye has ever yet seen me sew or cook. But why cook when you can get some one to cook for you? And as for sewing, the maids will hem the sheets better and quicker than I could, and all forms of needlework of the fancy order are inven- tions of the Evil One for keeping the foolish from applying their hearts to wisdom. We had been married five years before it struck us that we might as well make use of this place bv coming down and living in it. Those five years were spent in a flat in a town, and daring their whole interminable length I was perfectly miserable and perfectly healthy, which disposes i-U '^ Elizabeth and H of the ugly notion that has at times disturbed me that my happiness here is less due to the garden than to a good digestion. And while we were wasting our lives there, here was this dear place, with dandelions up to the very door, all the paths grass-grown and completely effaced, in winter so lonely, with nobody but the north wind taking the least notice of it, and in May — in all those five lovely Mays — no one to look at the wonder- ful bird-cherries and still more wonderful masses of lilacs, everything glowing and blowing, the Virginia creeper madder every year until at last, in October, the very roof was wreathed with blood-red tresses, the owls and the squirrels and all the blessed little birds reigning supreme, and not a living creature ever entering the empty house except the snakes, which got into the habit during those silent years of wriggling up the south wall into the rooms on that side whenever the old housekeeper opened the windows. All that was here, — peace, and happiness, and a reasonable life, — and yet it never struck me to come and live in it. Looking back I am astonished, and can in no way account for the tardiness of my discovery that here, in this far-away corner, was "k. Elizabeth and Her German Garden. my kingdom of heaven. Indeed, so little did it en- ter my head to even use the place in summer, that I submitted to weeks of seaside life, with all its horrors, every year ; until at last, in the early spring of last year, having come down for the opening of the village school, and wandering out afterward into the bare and desolate garden, I don't know what smell of wet earth or rotting leaves brought back my childhood with a rush, and all the happy days I had spent in a garden. Shall I ever forget that day ? It was the begin- ning of my real life ; my coming of age, as it were, and entering into my kingdom. Early March, gray, quiet skies, and brown, quiet earth ; leafless and sad and lonely enough out there in the damp and silence, yet there I stood feeling the same rapture of pure delight in the first breath of spring that I used to as a child ; and the five wasted years fell from me like a cloak, and the world was full of hope, and I vowed my- self then and there to nature, and have been happy ever since. My other half being indulgent, and with some faint thought perhaps that it might be as well to look after the place, consented to live in it, at any T h^ 1 '^^^ Elizabeth and Her German Garden. rate for a time ; whereupon followed six specially blissful weeks from the end of April into June, during which I was here alone, supposed to be superintending the painting and papering, but, as a matter of fact, only going into the house when the workmen had gone out of it. How happy I was ! I don't remember any time quite so perfect since the days when I was too little to do lessons and was turned out with sugar on my eleven-o'clock bread and butter onto a lawn closely strewn with dandelions and daisies. The sugar on the bread and butter has lost its charm, but I love the dandelions and daisies even more passionately now than then, and never would endure to see them all mown away if I were not certain that in a day or two they would be pushing up their little faces again as jauntily as ever. During those six weeks I lived in a world of dandelions and delights. The dandelions carpeted the three lawns — they used to be lawns, but have long since blossomed out into meadows filled with every sort of pretty weed — and under and among the groups of leafless oaks and beeches were blue hepaticas, white anemones, violets, and celandines in sheets. The -^ /^r ^ \,^i 1. ^^^f** fe Elizabeth and Her German Garden. celandines in particular delighted me, with their clean, happy brightness, so beautifully trim and newly varnished, as though they too had had the painters at work on them. Then, when the anem- ones went, came a few stray periwinkles and Solomon's-seal, and all the bird-cherries blos- somed in a burst. And then, before I had got a little used to the joy of their flowers against the sky, came the lilacs — masses and masses of them, in clumps on the grass, with other shrubs and trees by the side of walks, and one great con- tinuous bank of them half a mile long right past the west front of the house, away down as far as one could see, shining glorious against a back- ground of firs. When that time came, and when, before it was over, the acacias all blossomed too, and four great clumps of pale, silvery -pink peonies flowered under the south windows, I felt so absolutely happy, and blest, and thankful, and grateful, that I really cannot describe it. My days seemed to melt away in a dream of pink and purple peace. There were only the old housekeeper and her handmaiden in the house, so that on the plea of not o^ivingr too much trouble I could indulge ^4 I 0% 1 (^ -^^ :":"-'-■-• *" Elizabeth and Her German Garden. what my other half calls my fantaisie dtrtglee as regards meals — that is to say, meals so sim- ple that they could be brought out to the lilacs on a tray ; and I lived, I remember, on salad and bread and tea the whole time, sometimes a very tiny pigeon appearing at lunch to save me, as the old lady thought, from starvation. Who but a woman could have stood salad for six weeks, even salad sanctified by the presence and scent of the most gorgeous lilac masses ? I did, and grew in grace every day, though I have never liked it since. How often now, oppressed by the necessity of assisting at three dining- '^^^Qr^ room meals daily, two of which are conducted ^i^^'fy by the functionaries held indispensable to a proper maintenance of the family dignity, and all of which are pervaded by joints of meat, how often do I think of my salad days, forty in num- ber, and of the blessedness of being alone as I was then alone ! And then the evenings, when the workmen ^"^j had all gone and the house was left to emptiness and echoes, and the old housekeeper had gathered up her rheumatic limbs into her bed, and my little room in quite another part of the house had m^-M «*r. '..J-.y'. Elizabeth and Her German Garden been set ready, how reluctantly I used to leave the friendly frogs and owls, and, with my heart somewhere down in my shoes, lock the door to the garden behind me, and pass through the long series of echoing south rooms full of shadows and ladders and ghostly pails of painters' mess, and, humming a tune to make myself believe I liked it, go rather slowly across the brick-floored hall up the creaking stairs, down the long whitewashed passage, and with a final rush of panic whisk into my room and double lock and bolt the door ! There were no bells in the house, and I used to take a great dinner bell to bed with me so that at least I might be able to make a noise if frightened in the night, though what good it would have been I don't know, as there was no one to hear. The housemaid slept in another little cell opening out of mine, and we two were the only living creatures in the great empty west wing. She evidently did not believe in ghosts, for I could hear how she fell asleep immediately after getting into bed ; nor do I believe in them, " mais je les redoute^'' as a French lady said, who from her books appears to have been stronc^-minded. Elizabeth and Her German Garden. The dinner bell was a great solace ; it was never rung, but it comforted me to see it on the chair beside my bed, as my nights were any- thing but placid, it was all so strange, and there were such queer creakings and other noises. I used to lie awake for hours, startled out of a light sleep by the cracking of some board, and listen to the indifferent snores of the girl in the next room. In the morning, of course, I was as brave as a lion and much amused at the cold per- spirations of the night before ; but even the nights seem to me now to have been delightful, and myself like those historic boys who heard a voice in every wind and snatched a fearful joy. I would gladly shiver through them all over again for the sake of the beautiful purity of the house, empty of servants and upholstery. How pretty the bedrooms looked, with nothing in them but their cheerful new papers ! Some- times I would go into those that were finished and build up all sorts of castles in the air about their future and their past. Would the nuns who had lived in them know their little white- washed cells again, all gay with delicate flower papers and clean white paint ? And how aston- T ished they would be to see cell No. li turned into a bathroom, with a bath big enough to insure a cleanliness of body equal to their purity of soul ! They would look upon it as a snare of the Temp- ter ; and I know that in my own case I only began to be shocked at the blackness of my nails the day that I began to lose the first whiteness of my soul by falling in love at fifteen with the parish \\ organist, or rather with the glimpse of surplice and Koman nose and fiery mustache which was ^ I all I ever saw of him, and which I loved to dis- traction for at least six months ; at the end of which time, going out with my governess one day, I passed him in the street, and discovered that his unofficial garb was a frock-coat combined with a turndown collar and a " bowler" hat, and never loved him any more. The first part of that time of blessedness was the most perfect, for I had not a thought of any- thing but the peace and beauty all round me. Then he appeared suddenly who has a right to appear when and how he will, and rebuked me for never having written, and when I told him that I had been literally too happy to think of writino;, he seemed to take it as a reflection on ^ ^ Elizabeth and Her German Garden. himself that I could be happ}^ alone. I took liim round the garden along the new paths I had had made, and showed him the acacia and lilac glories, and he said that it was the purest selfish- ness to enjoy myself when neither he nor the off- spring were with me, and that the lilacs wanted thorough pruning. I tried to appease him by offer- ing him the whole of my salad and toast supper which stood ready at the foot of the little veranda steps when we came back, but nothing appeased that Man of Wrath, and he said he would go straight back to the neglected family. So he went ; and the remainder of the precious time was disturbed by twinges of conscience (to which I am much subject) whenever I found myself wanting to jump for joy. I w^ent to look at the painters every time my feet were for taking me to look at the garden ; I trotted diligently up and down the passages; I criticised and suggested and commanded more in one day than I had done in all the rest of the time ; I wrote regularly and sent my love ; but I could not manage to fret and yearn. What are you to do if your conscience is clear and your liver in order and the sun is shin- ing ? P " w I Elizabeth and Her German Garden 2Iay 10. — I kne^y nothing whatever last year about gardening and this year know very little more, but I have dawnings of what may be done, and have at least made one great stride— from ipomsea to tea-roses. The garden was an absolute wilderness. It is all round the house, but the principal part is on the south side and has evidently always been so. The south front is one-storied, a long series of rooms opening one into the other, and the walls are covered with Virginia creeper. There is a little veranda in the middle, leading by a flight of rickety wooden steps down into what seems to have been the only spot in the whole place that was ever cared for. This is a semicircle cut into the lawn and edged with privet, and in this semi- circle are eleven beds of different sizes bordered with box and arranged round a sun-dial, and the sun-dial is very venerable and moss-grown, and greatly beloved by me. These beds were the only sign of any attempt at gardening to be seen (except a solitary crocus that came up all by itself each spring in the grass, not because it wanted to, but because it could not help it), and these I had sown with ipomsea, the whole eleven, having i Tlf 1 Elizabeth and Her German Garden. found a German gardening book, according to Avhich ipomaea in vast quantities was the one thing needful to turn the most hideous desert into a paradise. Xothing else in that book was rec- ommended with anything like the same warmth, and being entirely ignorant of the quantity of seed necessary, I bought ten pounds of it and had it sown not only in the eleven beds, but round nearly every tree, and then waited in great agita- tion for the promised paradise to appear. It did not, and I learned my first lesson. Luckily I had sown two great patches of sweet- peas, which made me very happy all the summer, and then there were some sunflowers and a few hollyhocks under the south windows, with Ma- donna lilies in between . But the lilies, after being transplanted, disappeared, to my great dismay, for how was I to know it was the way of lilies ? And the hollyhocks turned out to be rather ugly colors, so that my first summer was decorated and beautified solely by sweet-peas. At present we are only just beginning to breathe after the bustle of getting new beds and borders and paths made in time for this summer. The eleven beds round the sun-dial are filled with I A, vv ki roses. ^«^^V; as Elizabeth and Her German Garden. but I see already that I have made mis- takes with some. As I have not a living soul with whom to hold communion on this or, indeed, on any matter, my only way of learning is by making mistakes. All eleven were to have been carpeted with purple pansies, but finding that I had not enough and that nobody had any to sell me, only six have got their pansies, the others being sown with dwarf mignonette. Two of the eleven are filled with Marie van Iloutte roses, two with Viscountess Folkestone, two with Lau- rette Messimy, one with Souvenir de la Malmai- son, one with Adam and Devoniensis, two with Persian Yellow and Bicolor, and one big bed be- hind the sun-dial with three sorts of red roses (seventy-two in all), Duke of Teck, Cheshunt Scarlet, and Prefet de Limburg. This bed is, I am sure, a mistake, and several of the others are, I think, but of course I must wait and see, being such an ignorant person. Then I have had two long beds made in the grass on either side of the J^^ semicircle, each sown with mignonette, and one ^ filled with Marie van Houtte, and the other with ^ Jules Finger and the Bride: and in a warm corner f v; under the drawing-room windows is a bed of / ^A^ m^ Elizabeth and Her German Garden. Madame Lauibard, Madame de Watteville, and Comtesse Riza du Pare ; while farther down the garden, sheltered on the north and west by a group of beeches and lilacs, is another large bed, . , containing Eubens, Madame Joseph Schwartz, \j\ iJj ^ and the lion. Edith Gifford. All these roses are dwarf : I have only two standards in the whole garden, two Madame George Eruants, and they look like broomsticks. How I long for the day when the teas open their buds ! Xever did I look forward so intensely to anything ; and every day I go the rounds, admiring what the dear little things have achieved in the twenty-four hours in the way of new leaf or increase of lovely red shoot. The hollyhocks and lilies (now flourishing) are still under the south windows in a narrow border on the top of a grass slope, at the foot of which I have sown two long borders of sweet-peas facing the rose beds, so that my roses may have something almost as sweet as themselves to look at until the autumn, when everything is to make place for more tea-roses. The path leading away from this semicircle down the garden is bordered with China roses, white and pink, with here and j) vZw/Al\^ aD] \%^^ Elizabeth and Her German Garden. there a Persian Yellow. I wish now I had put teas there, and I have misgivings as to the effect of the Persian Yellows among the Chinas, for the Chinas are such wee little baby things, and the Persian Yellows look as though they intended to be big bushes. There is not a creature in all this part of the world who could in the least understand with what heart-beatings I am looking forward to the flowering of these roses, and not a German gar- dening book that does not relegate all teas to hot- houses, imprisoning them for life, and depriving them forever of the breath of God. It was no doubt because I was so ignorant that I rushed in where Teutonic angels fear to tread, and made my teas face a northern winter; but they did face it under fir branches and leaves, and not one has suffered, and they are looking to-day as happy and as determined to enjoy themselves as any roses, I am sure, in Europe. May 14. — To-day I am writing on the veranda ^ with the three babies, more persistent than mos- quitoes, raging round me, and already several of the thirty fingers have been in the ink-pot and M r^rrA ■YfM 5i^m > ^ Elizabeth and Her German Garden. ^i the owners consoled when duty pointed to re- '2i bukes. But who can rebuke such penitent and 1^ drooping sun bonnets ? I can see nothing but ^ sunbonnets and pinafores and nimble black legs. \J These three, their patient nurse, myself, the Q^\ gardener, and the gardener's assistant are the only people who ever go into my garden, but ^ then neither are we ever out of it. The gardener ( ^ has been here a year, and has given me notice /' Ai^^f v-_^ regularly on the first of every month, but up to ^^\Ji^.^^^" now has been induced to stay on. On the first V < of this month he came as usual, and with deter- _v - mi nation written on every feature told me he A intended to go in June, and that nothing should ^ alter his decision. I don't think he knows much about gardening, but he can at least dig and ^j/ (^^ water, and some of the things he sows comes up, and some of the plants he plants grow, besides ^^^^ which he is the most unfiaggingly industrious person I ever saw, and has the great merit of never appearing to take the faintest interest r>^^< o;''^-. 1^ ^>;' Elizabeth and Her German Garden, and up into the tree. The one that is dead must have been blown off the branch, as it was a windy night, and its neck is broken. There is one happy life less in the garden to-day through my fault, and it is such a lovely, warm day — just the sort of weather for young soft things to enjoy and grow in. The babies are greatly dis- tressed, and are digging a grave and preparing funeral wreaths of dandelions. Just as I had written that I heard sounds of arrival, and running out I breathlessly told the Man of Wrath how nearly I had been able to give him the owls he has so often said he would like to have, and how sorry I was they were gone, and how grievous the death of one and so on, after the voluble manner of women. He listened till I paused to breathe, and then he said, " I am surprised at such cruelty. How could you make the mother owl suffer so ? She had never done you any harm." Which sent me out of the house and into the garden more convinced than ever that he sang true who sang, " Tivo pardises "'twere in 07ie to live in Paradise alone.^^ ti'>^. Si S^!M Elizabeth and Her German Garden May 16.— The garden is the place I go to for refuge and shelter, not the house. In the house are duties and annoyances, servants to exhort and admonish, furniture, and meals ; but out there blessings crowd around me at every step — it is there that I am sorry for the unkindness in me, for those selfish thoughts that are so much worse than they feel ; it is there that all my sins and silliness are forgiven, there that I feel protected and at home, and every flower and weed is a friend and every tree a lover. When I have been vexed I run out to them for comfort, and when I have been angry without just cause, it is there that I find absolution. Did ever a woman have so many friends ? And al- ways the same, always ready to welcome me and fill me with cheerful thoughts, Happy children ^^ of a common Father, why should I, their own !j sister, be less content and joyous than they 1 Even in a thunderstorm, when other people are '\ running into the house I run out of it. I do not like thunderstorms — they frighten me for hours before they come, because I always feel them on the way ; but it is odd that I should go for shelter jJ| in the garden. I feel better there, more taken ' LIVE IN PARADISE t W'^ \ ym t- ^--t > Elizabeth and Her German Garden. care of, more petted. "When it thunders, the April baby says, " There's lieher Ciott scolding those angels again." And once, when there was a storm in the night, she complained loudly and wanted to know why lieher G-ott didn't do the scolding in the daytime, as she had been so tight asleep. They all three speak a wonderful mix- ture of German and English, and adulterating the purity of their native tongue by putting in English words in the middle of a German sentence. It always reminds me of Justice tempered by Mercy. We have been cowslipping to-day in a little wood dignified by the name of the Hirschwald, because it is the happy -hunting ground of innu- merable deer who fight there in the autumn even- ing calling each other out to combat with hayings that ring through the silence and send agree- able shivers through the lonely listener. I often walk there in September, late in the evening, and sitting on a fallen tree listen fascinated to their angry cries. "We made cowslip balls sitting on the grass. The babies had never seen such things nor had imagined anything half so sweet. The Hirsch- wald is a little open wood of silver birches and fm 'i kr i Elizabeth and Her German Garden. springy turf starred with flowers, and there is a tiny stream meandering amiably about it and decking itself in June with yellow flags. I have dreams of having a little cottage built there, with the daisies up to the door, and no path of any sort — just big enough to hold myself and one baby inside and a purple clematis outside. Two rooms — a bedroom and a kitchen. How scared we would be at night, and how completely happy by day I I know the exact spot where it should stand, facing southeast, so that we should get all the cheerfulness of the morning, and close to the stream, so that we might wash our plates among the flags. Sometimes, when in the mood for societv, we would invite the remaininor babies to tea and entertain them with wild straw- berries on plates of horse-chestnut leaves ; but no one less innocent and easily pleased than r baby would be permitted to darken the effulgence of our sunny cottage — indeed, I don't suppose that anybody wiser v»'ould care to come. "Wise people want so many things before they can even begin to enjoy themselves, and I feel perpetually apologetic, when with them, for only being able to offer them that which I love best mvself — > u %) Elizabeth and Her German Garden. apologetic, and ashamed of being so easily con- tented. The other day at a dinner party in the nearest town (it took us the whole afternoon to get there) the women after dinner were curious to know how I had endured the winter, cut off from every- body and snowed up sometimes for weeks. " Ah, these husbands ! " sighed an ample lady, lugubriously shaking her head; "they shut up their wives because it suits them, and don't care what their sufferings are.'- Then the others sighed and shook their heads too, for the ample lady was a great local poten- tate, and one began to tell how another dreadful husband had brought his young wife into the country and had kept her there, concealing her beauty and accomplishments from the public in a most cruel manner, and how, after spending a certain number of years in alternately weepinii and producing progeny, she had quite lately run J.\f^^^'i^^^^ away with somebody unspeakable — 1 think it was the footman, or the baker, or some one of that sort. " But I am quite happy," I began, as soon as I could put in a word. A ?v s, ?-?:M%- ^A '^M ^/i^ .^ m Elizabeth and Her German Garde " Ah, a good little wife, making the best of and the female potentate patted my hand, but continued to gloomily shake her head. " You cannot possibly be happy in the winter entirely alone," asserted another lady, the wife of a high military authority and not accustomed ^^ to ob contradicted. " But I am." " "Rut how can you possibly be at your age ? No, it is not possible." "But I am." '' Your husband ought to bring you to town in the winter." " But I don't want to be brought to town." "And not let you waste your best years buried." " But I like being buried." " Such solitude is not right." " But I'm not solitary." " And can come to no good." She was getting quite angry. There was a chorus of No Indeeds at her last remark, and renewed shaking of heads. " I enjoyed the winter immensely," I persisted when they were a little quieter ; " I sleighed and lis skated, and then there were the cliildren, and shelves and shelves full of " I was going to say books, but stopped. Reading is an occupa- tion for men ; for women it is reprehensible waste of time. And how could I talk to them of the happiness I felt when the sun shone on the snow, or of the deep delight of hoar-frost days ? " It is entirely my doing that we have come down here," I proceeded, " and my husband only did it to please me." " Such a good little wife," repeated the patron- izing potentate, again patting my hand with an air of understanding all about it, " really an ex- cellent little wife. But you must not let your husband have his own way too much, my dear, and take my advice and insist on his bringing you to town next winter." And then they fell to talking about their cooks, having settled to their entire satisfaction that my fate was probably lying in wait for me too, lurk- ing perhaps at that very moment behind the ap- parently harmless brass buttons of the man in ^vfr^ the hall with my cloak. I laughed on the way home, and I laughed ^^^jT^ again for sheer satisfaction when we reached the ~^^> f^'=^J^'. t^ - — JS o ■ m , N^ i^'(^i Elizabeth and Her German Garden. garden and drove between the quiet trees to the pretty old house ; and when I went into the library, with its four windows open to the moon- licrht and the scent, and looked round at the familiar bookshelves, and could hear no sounds but sounds of peace, and knew that here I might \ read or dream or idle exactly as I chose with never a creature to disturb me, how grateful 1 felt to the kindly Fate that has brought me here and given me a heart to understand my own blessedness, and rescued me from a life like that I had just seen — a life spent with the odors of other people's dinners in one's nostrils, and the noise of their wrangling servants in one's ears, and parties and tattle for all amusement. But I must confess to having felt sometimes quite crushed when some grand person, examin- ing the details of my home through her eyeglass, and coolly dissecting all that I so much prize from the convenient distance of the open window, has finished up by expressing sympathy with my loneliness, and on my protesting that I like it, has murmured, " sehr anspruchslos.''' Then I have felt ashamed of the fewness of my wants ; but only for a moment, and only under the wither- I ._v. U i I ?a1 iV. i Elizabeth and Her German Garden. 39 iDg influence of the eyeglass ; for after all, the owner's spirit is the same spirit as that which dwells in my servants — girls whose one idea of happiness is to live in a town where there are others of their sort with whom to drink beer and dance on Sunday afternoons. The passion for being forever with one's fellows, and the fear of being left for a few hours alone, is to me wholly incomprehensible. I can entertain myself quite well for weeks together, hardly aware, except for the pervading peace, that I have been alone at all. Not but what I like to have people staying with me for a few days, or even for a few weeks, should they be as ansjpruchslos as I am myself, and content with simple joys ; only, any one who comes here and would be happy must have some- thing in him ; if he be a mere blank creature, empty of head and heart, he will very probably find it dull. I should like my house to be often full if I could find people capable of enjoying themselves. They should be welcomed and sped with equal heartiness ; for truth compels me to confess that, though it pleases me to see them come, it pleases me just as much to see them go. On some very specially divine days, like to- ^ "^^^ Ji^. # Hi' J Elizabeth and Her German Garden. ^AD^ day, I have actually longed for some one else to W^^/'l be here to enjoy the beauty with me. There has been rain in the night, and the whole garden -^.v \ ■ seems to be singing — not the untiring birds f\' only, but the vigorous plants, the happy grass 3^^>^ and trees, the lilac bushes — oh, those lilac bushes ! TheV are all out to-day, and the garden is drenched with the scent. I have brought in armfuls, the picking is such a delight, and every pot and bowl and tub in the house is filled with purple glory, and the servants think there is going to be a party and are extra nimble, and I go from room to room gazing at the sweetness, and the windows are all flung open so as to join the scent within to the scent without ; and the servants gradually discover that there is no party, and wonder why the house should be filled with flowers for one woman by herself, and I long more and more for a kindred spirit— it seems so greedy to have so much loveliness to one's self — but kindred spirits are so very, very rare ; I might almost as well cry for the moon. It is true that my garden is full of friends, only they are — dumb. Ju7ie 3. — This is such an out-of-the-way corner 'if, r»«» Elizabeth and Her German Garden. of the world that it requires quite unusual energy to get here at all, and I am thus delivered from casual callers ; while, on the other hand, people I love, or people who love me, which is much the same thing, are not likely to be deterred from coming by the roundabout train journey and the long drive at the end. ISTot the least of my many blessings is that we have only one neighbor. If you have to have neighbors at all, it is at least a mercy that there should be only one ; for with people dropping in at all hours and wanting to talk to you, how are you to get on with your life, I should like to know, and read your books, and dream your dreams to your satisfaction ? Be- sides, there is always the certainty that either you or the dropper-in will say something that would have been better left unsaid, and I have a holy horror of gossip and mischief -making. A woman's tongue is a deadly weapon and the most difficult thing in the world to keep in order, and things slip off it with a facility nothing short of appalling at the very moment when it ought to be most quiet. In such cases the only safe course is to talk steadily about cooks and children, and to pray that the visit ma}^ not be too prolonged, for if it is you are lost. Cooks I have found to be the best of all subjects— the most phlegmatic flush into life at the mere word, and the joys and sufferings connected with them are experiences common to us all. Luckily, our neighbor and his wife are both .'^^ busy and charming, with a whole troop of flax- 'S^^ ^n-haired little children to keep them occupied, ^^ besides the business of their large estate. Our '^_ ^,,. intercourse is arranged on lines of the most i:, beautiful simplicity. 1 call on her once a year, ^ and she returns the call a fortnight later ; thev 1^ ask us to dinner in the summer, and we ask them J| to dinner in the winter. By strictly keeping to ?;/' this, we avoid all dano:er of that closer friendship ?| which is only another name for frequent quarrels. She is a pattern of what a German country lady should be, and is not only a pretty woman, but an energetic and practical one, and the combina- tion is, to say the least, effective. She is up at daylight superintending the feeding of the stock, the butter-making, the sending off of the milk for sale ; a thousand things get done while most people are fast asleep, and before lazy folk are well at breakfast she is off in her pony-carriage to r/*. ■