Old-Time Gardens, Newly Set Forth

I think much of my love of Box comes from happy associations with this garden. I used to like to go there with my mother when she went on what the Japanese would call "garden-viewing" visits, for at the lower end of the garden was a small orchard of the finest playhouse Apple trees I ever climbed (and I have had much experience), and some large trees bearing little globular early Pears; and there were rows of bushes of golden "Honeyblob" Gooseberries. The Apple trees are there still, but the Gooseberry bushes are gone. I looked for them this summer eagerly, but in vain; I presume the berries would have been sour had I found them.

In many old New England gardens the close juxtaposition and even intermingling of vegetables and fruits with the flowers gave a sense of homely simplicity and usefulness which did not detract from the garden's interest, and added much to the child's pleasure. At the lower end of the long flower border in our garden, grew "Mourning Brides," white, pale lavender, and purple brown in tint. They opened under the shadow of a row of Gooseberry bushes. I seldom see Gooseberry bushes nowadays in any gardens, whether on farms or in nurseries; they seem to be an antiquated fruit.

I have in my memory many other customs of childhood in the garden; some of them I have told in my book Child Life in Colonial Days, and there are scores more which I have not recounted, but most of them were peculiar to my own fanciful childhood, and I will not recount them here.

One of the most exquisite of Mrs. Browning's poems is The Lost Bower; it is endeared to me because it expresses so fully a childish bereavement of my own, for I have a lost garden. Somewhere, in my childhood, I saw this beautiful garden, filled with radiant blossoms, rich with fruit and berries, set with beehives, rabbit hutches, and a dove cote, and enclosed about with hedges; and through it ran a purling brook – a thing I ever longed for in my home garden. All one happy summer afternoon I played in it, and gathered from its beds and borders at will – and I have never seen it since. When I was still a child I used to ask to return to it, but no one seemed to understand; and when I was grown I asked where it was, describing it in every detail, and the only answer was that it was a dream, I had never seen and played in such a garden. This lost garden has become to me an emblem, as was the lost bower to Mrs. Browning, of the losses of life; but I did not lose all; while memory lasts I shall ever possess the happiness of my childhood passed in our home garden.

CHAPTER XVI

MEETIN' SEED AND SABBATH DAY POSIES

"I touched a thought, I knowHas tantalized me many times.Help me to hold it! First it leftThe yellowing Fennel run to seed."– Robert Browning.

My "thought" is the association of certain flowers with Sunday; the fact that special flowers and leaves and seeds, Fennel, Dill, and Southernwood, were held to be fitting and meet to carry to the Sunday service. "Help me to hold it" – to record those simple customs of the country-side ere they are forgotten.

In the herb garden grew three free-growing plants, all three called indifferently in country tongue, "meetin' seed." They were Fennel, Dill, and Caraway, and similar in growth and seed. Caraway is shown on page 342. Their name was given because, in summer days of years gone by, nearly every woman and child carried to "meeting" on Sundays, bunches of the ripe seeds of one or all of these three plants, to nibble throughout the long prayers and sermon.

It is fancied that these herbs were anti-soporific, but I find no record of such power. On the contrary, Galen says Dill "procureth sleep, wherefore garlands of Dill are worn at feasts." A far more probable reason for its presence at church was the quality assigned to it by Pliny and other herbalists down to Gerarde, that of staying the "yeox or hicket or hicquet," otherwise the hiccough. If we can judge by the manifold remedies offered to allay this affliction, it was certainly very prevalent in ancient times. Cotton Mather wrote a bulky medical treatise entitled The Angel of Bethesda. It was never printed; the manuscript is owned by the American Antiquarian Society. The character of this medico-religious book may be judged by this opening sentence of his chapter on the hiccough: —

"The Hiccough or the Hicox rather, for it's a Teutonic word that signifies to sob, appears a Lively Emblem of the battle between the Flesh and the Spirit in the Life of Piety. The Conflict in the Pious Mind gives all the Trouble and same uneasiness as Hickox. Death puts an end to the Conflict."

Parson Mather gives Tansy and Caraway as remedies for the hiccough, but far better still – spiders, prepared in various odious ways; I prefer Dill.

Peter Parley said that "a sprig of Fennel was the theological smelling-bottle of the tender sex, and not unfrequently of the men, who from long sitting in the sanctuary, after a week of labor in the field, found themselves tempted to sleep, would sometimes borrow a sprig of Fennel, to exorcise the fiend that threatened their spiritual welfare."

Old-fashioned folk kept up a constant nibbling in church, not only of these three seeds, but of bits of Cinnamon or Lovage root, or, more commonly still, the roots of Sweet Flag. Many children went to brooksides and the banks of ponds to gather these roots. This pleasure was denied to us, but we had a Flag root purveyor, our milkman's daughter. This milkman, who lived on a lonely farm, used often to take with him on his daily rounds his little daughter. She sat with him on the front seat of his queer cart in summer and his queerer pung in winter, an odd little figure, with a face of gypsylike beauty which could scarcely be seen in the depths of the Shaker sunbonnet or pumpkin hood. If my mother chanced to see her, she gave the child an orange, or a few figs, or some little cakes, or almonds and raisins; in return the child would throw out to us violently roots of Sweet Flag, Wild Ginger, Snakeroot, Sassafras, and Apples or Pears, which she carried in a deep detached pocket at her side. She never spoke, and the milkman confided to my mother that he "took her around because she was so wild," by which he meant timid. We were firmly convinced that the child could not walk nor speak, and had no ears; and we were much surprised when she walked down the aisle of our church one Sunday as actively as any child could, displaying very natural ears. Her father had bought a home in the town that she might go to school. He was rewarded by her development into one of those scholars of phenomenal brilliancy, such as are occasionally produced from New England farmers' families. She also became a beauty of most unusual type. At her father's death she "went West." I have always expected to read of her as of marked life in some way, but I never have. Of course her family name may have been changed by marriage; but her Christian name, Appoline, was so unusual I could certainly trace her. If my wild and beautiful little milk girl reads these lines, I hope she will forgive me, for she certainly was queer.

When her residence was in town, Appoline did not cease her gifts of country treasures. She brought on spring Sundays a very delightful addition to our Sabbath day nibblings and browsings, the most delicious mouthful of all the treasures of New England woods, what we called Pippins, the first tender leaves of the aromatic Checkerberry. In the autumn the spicy berries of the same plant filled many a paper cornucopia which was secretly conveyed to us.

It was also a universal custom among the elder folk to carry a Sunday posy; the stems were discreetly enwrapped with the folded handkerchief which also concealed the sprig of Fennel. Dean Hole tells us that a sprig of Southernwood was always seen in the Sunday smocks of English farm folk. Mary Howitt, in her poem, The Poor Man's Garden, has this verse: —

"And here on Sabbath morningsThe goodman comes to getHis Sunday nosegay – Moss Rose bud,White Pink, and Mignonette."

This shows to me that the church posy was just as common in England as in America; in domestic and social customs we can never disassociate ourselves from England; our ways, our deeds, are all English.

Thoreau noted with pleasure when, at the last of June, the young men of Concord "walked slowly and soberly to church, in their best clothes, each with a Pond Lily in his hand or bosom, with as long a stem as he could get." And he adds thereto almost the only decorous and conventional picture he gives of himself, that he used in early life to go thus to church, smelling a Pond Lily, "its odor contrasting with and atoning for that of the sermon." He associated this universal bearing of the Lily with a very natural act, that of the first spring swim and bath, and pictured with delight the quiet Sabbath stillness and the pure opening flowers. He said the flower had become typical to him equally of a Sunday morning swim and of church-going. He adds that the young women carried on this floral Sunday, as a companion flower, their first Rose.

West End Avenue, New York.

This Sabbath bearing of the early Water Lilies may have been a local custom; a few miles from Walden Pond and Concord an old kinsman of mine throughout his long life (which closed twenty years ago) carried Water Lilies on summer Sundays to church; and starting with neighborly intent a short time before the usual hour of church service, he placed a single beautiful Lily in the pew of each of his old friends. All knew who was the flower bearer, and gentle smiles and nods of thanks would radiate across the old church to him. These lilies were gathered for him freshly each Sabbath morning by the young men of his family, who, as Thoreau tells, all took their morning bath in the pond throughout the summer.

There were conventions in these Sunday posies. I never heard of carrying sprays of Lemon Verbena or Rose Geranium, or any of the strong-scented herbs of the Mint family; but throughout eastern Massachusetts, especially in Concord and Wayland, a favorite posy was a spray of the refreshing, soft-textured leaves from what country folk called the Tongue plant – which was none other than Costmary, also called Beaver tongue, and Patagonian mint. As there has been recently much interest and discussion anent this Tongue plant, I here give its botanical name Chrysanthemum balsamita, var. tanacetoides. A far more popular Sunday posy than any blossom was a sprig of Southernwood, known also everywhere as Lad's-love, and occasionally as Old Man and Kiss-me-quick-and-go. It was also termed Meeting plant from this universal Sunday use.

A restless little child was once handed during the church services in summer a bunch of Caraway seeds, and a goodly sprig of Southernwood. The little girl's mother listened earnestly to the long sermon, and was horrified at its close to find that her child had eaten the entire bunch of Caraway, stems and seeds, and all the bitter Southernwood. She was hurried out of church to the village doctor's, and spent a very unhappy hour or two as the result of her Nebuchadnezzar-like gorging.

Like many New Englanders, I dearly love the scent of Southernwood: —

"I'll give to himWho gathers me, more sweetness than he knowsWithout me – more than any Lily could,I, that am flowerless, being Southernwood."

Southernwood bears a balmier breath than is ever borne by many blossoms, for it is sweet with the fragrance of memory. The scent that has been loved for centuries, the leaves that have been pressed to the hearts of fair maids, as they questioned of love, are indeed endeared.

Southernwood was a plant of vast powers. It was named in the fourteenth century as potent to cure talking in sleep, and other "vanityes of the heade." An old Salem sea captain had this recipe for baldness: "Take a quantitye of Suthernwoode and put it upon kindled coale to burn and being made into a powder mix it with oyl of radiches, and anoynt a bald head and you shall see great experiences." The lying old Dispensatory of Culpepper gave a rule to mix the ashes of Southernwood with "Old Sallet Oyl" which "helpeth those that are hair-fallen and bald."

Far pleasanter were the uses of the plant as a love charm. Pliny did not disdain to counsel putting Southernwood under the pillow to make one dream of a lover. A sprig of Southernwood in an unmarried girl's shoe would bring to her the sight of her husband-to-be before night.

Sixty years ago two young country folk of New England were married. The twain built them a house and established their home. Since a sprig of Southernwood had played a romantic part in their courtship, each planted a bush at the side of the broad doorstone; and the husband, William, often thrust a bit of this Lad's-love from the flourishing bushes in the buttonhole of his woollen shirt, for he fancied the fresh scent of the leaves.

The twain had no children, and perhaps therefrom grew and increased in Hetty a fairly passionate love of exact order and neatness in her home – a trait which is not so common in New England housewives as many fancy, and which does not always find equal growth and encouragement in New England husbands. William chafed under the frequent and bitter reproofs for the muddy shoes, dusty garments, hanging straws and seeds which he brought into his wife's orderly paradise, and the jarring culminated one night over such a trifle, a green sprig of Lad's-love which he had dropped and trodden into the freshly washed floor of the kitchen, where it left a green stain on the spotless boards.

The quarrel flamed high, and was followed by an ominous calm which was not broken at breakfast. It would be impossible to express in words Hetty's emotions when she crossed her threshold to set her shining milk tins in the morning sunlight, and saw on one side of the doorstone a yawning hole where had grown for ten years William's bunch of Lad's-love. He had driven to the next village to sell some grain, so she could search unseen for the vanished emblem of domestic felicity, and soon she found it, in the ditch by the public road, already withered in the hot sun.

When her husband went at nightfall to feed and water his cattle, he found the other bush of Lad's-love, which had been planted with such affectionate sentiment, trodden in the mire of the pigpen, under the feet of the swine.

They lived together for thirty years after this crowning indignity. The grass grew green over the empty holes by the doorside, but he never forgave her, and they never spoke to each other save in direst necessity, and then in fewest words. Yet they were not wicked folk. She cared for his father and mother in the last years of their life with a devotion that was fairly pathetic when it was seen that the old man was untidy to a degree, and absolutely oblivious of all her orderly ways and wishes. At their death he sent for and "homed," as the expression ran, a brother of hers who was almost blind, and paid the expenses of her nephew through college – but he died unforgiving; the sight of that beloved Southernwood – in the pigpen – forever killed his affection.

CHAPTER XVII

SUN-DIALS

"'Tis an old dial, dark with many a stain,In summer crowned with drifting orchard bloom,Tricked in the autumn with the yellow rain,And white in winter like a marble tomb."And round about its gray, time-eaten browLean letters speak – a worn and shattered row: —'I am a Shade; A Shadowe too arte thou;I mark the Time; saye, Gossip, dost thou soe?'"– Austin Dobson.

A century or more ago, in the heart of nearly all English gardens, and in the gardens of our American colonies as well, there might be seen a pedestal of varying material, shape, and pretension, surmounted by the most interesting furnishing in "dead-works" of the garden, a sun-dial. In public squares, on the walls of public buildings, on bridges, and by the side of the way, other and simpler dials were found. On the walls of country houses and churches vertical sun-dials were displayed; every English town held them by scores. In Scotland, and to some extent in England, these sun-dials still are found; in fine old gardens the most richly carved dials are standing; but in America they have become so rare that many people have never seen one. In many of the formal gardens planned by our skilled architects, sun-dials are now springing afresh like mushroom growth of a single night, and some are objects of the greatest beauty and interest.

If the claims of antiquity and historical association have aught to charm us, every sun-dial must be assured of our interest. The most primitive mode of knowing of the midday hour was by a "noon mark," a groove cut or line drawn on door or window sill which indicated the meridian hour through a shadow thrown on this noon mark. A good guess as to the hours near noon could be made by noting the distance of the shadow from the noon mark. I chanced to be near an old noon mark this summer as the sun warned that noon approached; I noted that the marking shadow crossed the line at twenty minutes before noon by our watches – which, I suppose, was near enough to satisfy our "early to rise" ancestors. Meridian lines were often traced with exactness on the floors of churches in Continental Europe.

An advance step in accuracy and elegance was made when a simple metal sun-dial was affixed to the window sill instead of cutting the rude noon mark. Soon the sun-dial was set on a simple pedestal near the kitchen window, so that the active worker within might glance at the dial face without ceasing in her task. Such a sun-dial is shown on page 354, as it stands under the "buttery" window cosily hobnobbing with its old crony of many years, the bee skepe. One could wish to be a bee, and live in that snug home under the Syringa bush.

Portable sun-dials succeeded fixed dials; they have been known as long as the Christian era; shepherds' dials were the "Kalendars" or "Cylindres" about which treatises were written as early as the thirteenth century. They were small cylinders of wood or ivory, having at the top a kind of stopper with a hinged gnomon; they are still used in the Pyrenees. Pretty little "ring-dials" of brass, gold, or silver, are constructed on the same principle. The exquisitely wrought portable dial shown on this page is a very fine piece of workmanship, and must have been costly. It is dated 1764, and is eleven inches in diameter. It is a perfect example of the advanced type of dial made in Italy, which had a simpler form as early certainly as a. d. 300. The compass was added in the thirteenth century. The compass-needle is missing on this dial, its only blemish. The Italians excelled in dial-making; among their interesting forms were the cross-shaped dials evidently a reliquary.

Portable dials were used instead of watches. There is at the Washington headquarters at Morristown a delicately wrought oval silver case, with compass and sun-dial, which was carried by one of the French officers who came here with Lafayette; George Washington owned and carried one.

The colonists came here from a land set with dials, whether they sailed from Holland or England. Charles I had a vast fancy for dials, and had them placed everywhere; the finest and most curious was the splendid master dial placed in his private gardens at Whitehall; this had five dials set in the upper part, four in the four corners, and a great horizontal concave dial; among these were scattered equinoctial dials, vertical dials, declining dials, polar dials, plane dials, cylindrical dials, triangular dials; each was inscribed with explanatory verses in Latin. Equally beautiful and intricate were the dials of Charles II, the most marvellous being the vast pyramid dial bearing 271 different dial faces.

Those who wish to learn of English sun-dials should read Mrs. Gatty's Book of Sun-dials, a massive and fascinating volume. No such extended record could be made of American sun-dials; but it pleases me that I know of over two hundred sun-dials in America, chiefly old ones; that I have photographs of many of them; that I have copies of many hundred dial mottoes, and also a very fair collection of the old dial faces, of various metals and sizes.

I know of no public collection of sun-dials in America save that in the Smithsonian Institution, and that is not a large one. Several of our Historical Societies own single sun-dials. In the Essex Institute is the sun-dial of Governor Endicott; another, shown on page 344, was once the property of my far-away grandfather, Jonathan Fairbanks; it is in the Dedham Historical Society.

All forms of sun-dials are interesting. A simple but accurate one was set on Robins Island by the late Samuel Bowne Duryea, Esq., of Brooklyn. Taking the flagpole of the club house as a stylus, he laid the lines and figures of the dial-face with small dark stones on a ground of light-hued stones, all set firmly in the earth at the base of the pole. Thus was formed, with the simplest materials, by one who ever strove to give pleasure and stimulate knowledge in all around him, an object which not only told the time o' the day, but afforded gratification, elicited investigation, and awakened sentiment in all who beheld it.

A similar use of a vertical pole as a primitive gnomon for a sun-dial seems to have been common to many uncivilized peoples. In upper Egypt the natives set up a palm rod in open ground, and arrange a circle of stones or pegs around it, calling it an alka, and thus mark the hours. The ploughman leaves his buffalo standing in the furrow while he learns the progress of time from this simple dial – and we recall the words of Job, "As a servant earnestly desireth a shadow."

The Labrador Indians, when on the hunt or the march, set an upright stick or spear in the snow, and draw the line of the shadow thus cast. They then stalk on their way; and the women, heavily laden with provisions, shelter, and fuel, come slowly along two or three hours later, note the distance between the present shadow and the line drawn by their lords, and know at once whether they must gather up the stick or spear and hurry along, or can rest for a short time on their weary march. This is a primitive but exact chronometer.

There are serious objections to quoting from Charles Lamb: you are never willing to end the transcription – you long to add just one phrase, one clause more. Then, too, the purity of the pearl which you choose seems to render duller than their wont the leaden sentences with which you enclose it as a setting. Still, who could write of sun-dials without choosing to transcribe these words of Lamb's?

"What a dead thing is a clock, with its ponderous embowelments of lead or brass, its pert or solemn dulness of communication, compared with the simple altar-like structure and silent heart-language of the old dial! It stood as the garden god of Christian gardens. Why is it almost everywhere banished? If its business use be suspended by more elaborate inventions, its moral uses, its beauty, might have pleaded for its continuance. It spoke of moderate labors, of pleasures not protracted after sunset, of temperance and good hours. It was the primitive clock, the horologe of the first world. Adam could scarce have missed it in Paradise. The 'shepherd carved it out quaintly in the sun,' and turning philosopher by the very occupation, provided it with mottoes more touching than tombstones."

Sun-dial mottoes still can be gathered by hundreds; and they are one record of a force in the development of our literate people. For it was long after we had printing ere we had any general class of folk, who, if they could read, read anything save the Bible. To many the knowledge of reading came from the deciphering of what has been happily termed the Literature of the Bookless. This literature was placed that he who ran might read; and its opening chapters were in the form of inscriptions and legends and mottoes which were placed, not only on buildings and walls, and pillars and bridges, but on household furniture and table utensils.

The inscribing of mottoes on sun-dials appears to have sprung up with dial-making; and where could a strict moral lesson, a suggestive or inspiring thought, be better placed? Even the most heedless or indifferent passer-by, or the unwilling reader could not fail to see the instructive words when he cast his glance to learn the time.

The mottoes were frequently in Latin, a few in Greek or Hebrew; but the old English mottoes seem the most appealing.

ABUSE ME NOT I DO NO ILLI STAND TO SERVE THEE WITH GOOD WILLAS CAREFUL THEN BE SURE THOU BETO SERVE THY GOD AS I SERVE THEE.A CLOCK THE TIME MAY WRONGLY TELLI NEVER IF THE SUN SHINE WELL.AS A SHADOW SUCH IS LIFE.I COUNT NONE BUT SUNNY HOURS.BE THE DAY WEARY, BE THE DAY LONGSOON IT SHALL RING TO EVEN SONG.

Scriptural verses have ever been favorites, especially passages from the Psalms: "Man is like a thing of nought, his time passeth away like a shadow." "My time is in Thy hand." "Put not off from day to day." "Oh, remember how short my time is." Some of the Latin mottoes are very beautiful.