The Garden of Survival

felt dissatisfied and disappointed, yet knew not entirely perhaps, the reason. I wished to be alone, but was hungry for companionship as well. Mother saw me go and watc

hey were, respectively, as always, her dictionary of opinion, and her medicine-chest. Before I had

e on me, as the garden took me in its charge. For a garden is a ghostly place, and an old-world garden, abov

a longer time than I knew, since the gardener who had been trimming the flower-beds with a hand lawn-mower was gone, and dusk alrea

, while spring, still lingering, with bright eyes of dew,' watched over her. Then, suddenly, behind these richer scents, I caught a sweeter, wilder tang than anything they contained, and turning, saw that the pines were closer

sand gleamed faintly before the shadows swallowed them, and in the open patches I saw young silver-birches that made me think of running children arrested in mid-play. They stood outlined very tenderly against the sky; their slender forms still quivered; their feathery hair fell earthwards as they drew themselves together, b

s a touch of the unearthly in this loveliness that bewildered sight a little. Extraordinarily still the world was, yet there seemed activity close upon my footsteps, an activity more than of inanimate Nature, yet less

moment's hesitation, I was about to move forward through the gate, when again I halted. I listened, and cau

he shadows-something happened. Some faculty of judgment, some attitude in which I normally clothed myself, were abruptly stripped away. I was left bare and sensitiv

en. Yet so instant, and of such swiftness, was the stroke, that I can only de

the emotion was enveloping but very tender; it was both terrible yet dear. Would to God I might crystallize it for you in those few mighty words which should waken in yourself-in every one!-the wonder and the joy. It c

drowns the very universe had stolen out of this wild morsel of wasted and uncared-for English garden, and dropped its transforming magic into-me. At the very moment, moreover, when I had been

body was

I was almost aware of conscious and intelligent direction. For to you I will make the incredible confession, that I dare phrase the experience in another fashion, equally true: In that flashing instant I stood naked and shelterless to the gaze of some one who had looked upon me. I was aware of si

de it appear as though night, in one br

closer. I can swear, moreover, that it was neither dream, nor hope, nor any hun

gh in the bracken. The garden had been

rfume of dry heather, sand, and bracken. The horizon, low down between the trunks, shone gold and crimson still, but fading rapidly. I stood there for a long time trembling; I wa

felt, it must take tangible form, betray itself in visible movement of some sort, break possibly into audible sound of actual speech. It would not ha

t enough; there would have lain in it, too, a betrayal of the commonplace, as of something which I could not possibly hold for true. I must have distrusted my own senses e

my experience. Yet there was, thank God, no speech, no touch, no movement, other than the shiver of the birches, the breath of air against my cheek, the droop and bending of the nearer pine boughs. There was