Stranica 394 [394]
OCR
ÖLE ETET EE EE ee etess zszá esse szsezssszésszssztés jég ztja Pee EE DM LNIE ÜL VE CEE ON — att —. was taken in gardening, but, the proverbial Virginian hospitality must have brought many visitors to admire beauty which the owner of Oatlands was creating, not by the aid of landscape gardeners, but from his own good taste modified by the study of English patterns. He planted box—the American tree-box—seeing, with the eye of a prophet, the time when those dark branches should meet over a descending path, forming an archway of rare beauty. He planted it, also, by the side of a steep staircase opposite brick buildings used as tool and lumber-rooms, now long since crumbled into soil and, surrounding the vault where he was to be laid. But he did not neglect the English hedge-box, either; and his grandchildren tell of places where the box edging set oft, to their best advantage, roses and other vari-colored flowers. [hese low hedges have gone—remaining only as memories—with most of the shrubs and the old-time blossoms. But enough stays, as a background and a setting to all the beauty which modern taste and knowledge have brought to it. The Oatlands garden, especially in May or June, when the spiraea and flags are in full bloom, when colour runs riot everywhere, has that indefinable flavour of the past wrapt around it which marks it as a thing separate from the garden of today or even of yesterday. For people walked in its alleys and paths, by the shade of its walls, made love under the shadow of its trees, when America was very young, when President Monroe was building his country home, some three miles away, beyond the creek; before the years of strife and war, and when tragic memories still hung low over the Virginia hills. Federal troops passed through the grounds, cavalry trampled over lawns and flower beds, and in the house, the daughter-in-law of the builder of Oatlands guarded a secret hiding place for Confederate scouts when hard pressed by Northern raiders. So that those walls and terraces have known of gay days and sad; of romance and grief; and if spirits revisit their old haunts on earth, many may flit about on moonlight nights, along the [247]
