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tl IE SS GH ds) THE POTOMAC AND RAPPAHANNOCK Pa a —— — = — a ma TE (hickory) tree under whose protecting branches merry children have for many generations played "flower ladies. A corresponding pecan tree which stood on the left was blown down a few years ago. On this terrace narrower gravel walks branch off from the side. These lead one who traverses them through a maze of beautiful flowers which fill the quaintly shaped borders. Roses of many varieties and colors—lavender, whose blossoms are cut each year and placed among the linen—wall flower, foxglove, Canterbury bells, gaillardias, verbenas, orange and yellow calendulas, chrysanthemums, peonies, pink and white phlox, cowslips, snapdragons, petunias, flowering almond, Easter lilies, many kinds of iris, violets, lily of the valley in profusion, and others too numerous to mention fill the borders with sheets of brilliant bloom from earliest spring until latest autumn. The next terrace is given up to grapes, figs, strawberries, raspberries, currants and other small fruits, while the fourth and fifth are planted with vegetables and the sixth with fruit trees. It would be difficult to imagine a spot more suggestive of romance than this old garden. On a moonlight night, with the river a thread of silver in the distance, one can almost see the belles and beaux of bygone days emerging from the shadows. It was in the garden of Sabine Hall that George Washington and Landon Carter walked together as Washington unfolded his plans for the campaign at Morristown. When the latter returned he took with him the young son of Sabine Hall to enlist in the Army of the Revolution. It well-nigh broke his mother’s heart. Then followed a letter from General Washington to the boy’s father full of tender sympathy for the mother, ‘‘understanding her fears and anxieties,’ saying he is going to "place the boy with so good a man as General Baylor,” how he himself is sick of war and longs for the shades of private life. | Landon Carter’s diary tells of the yearly Christmas house parties, when the Lees and Washingtons, the Spotswoods and other [219 |
