"Your second question, regarding visiting you the coming season, was answering itself the other day when I was writing. Life here, except in winter, is becoming impossible to me. I have lost not only Josephus, but my back yard! The stable where they keep the pigeons has changed hands. Yes, you were right,—he did haunt the place, the postman says; and I suppose they did not understand that he was merely playful, and not hungry, or who he was, else maybe he was too careless about sitting on the side fence by the street. I could replace Josephus, but not the yard,—there are no more back yards to be had; their decadence is complete. I've closed my eyes for years to the ash heap my neighbour on the right kept in hers; also to the cast-off teeth that came over from the 'painless' dentist's on the left.
"When the great tenement flat ran up on the north, where I could, not so long ago, see the masts of the shipping in the Hudson, I sighed, and prayed that the tins and bottles that I gathered up each morning might not single me out when I was tying up my vines in the moonlight of early summer nights.
"Josephus resented these missiles, however, and his foolish habit of sitting on the low side fence under the ailantus tree then began. Next, I was obliged to give up growing roses, because, as you know, they are fresh-air lovers; and so much air and light was cut off by the high building that they yielded only leaves and worms. Still I struggled, and adapted myself to new conditions, and grew more of the stronger summer bedding plants.
"Five days ago I heard a banging and pounding. Only that morning Lucy had been told that the low, rambling carpenter's shop, that occupied a double lot along the 'street to the southwest, had been sold, and we anxiously waited developments. We were spared long suspense; for, on hearing the noise, and going to the little tea-room extension where I keep my winter plants, I saw a horde of men rapidly demolishing the shop, under directions of a superintendent, who was absolutely sitting on top of my honeysuckle trellis. After swallowing six times,—a trick father once taught me to cure explosive speech,—I went down and asked him if he could tell me to what use the lot was to be put. He replied: 'My job is only to clean it up; but the plans call for a twelve-story structure,—warehouse, I guess. But you needn't fret; it's to be fireproof.'
"'Fireproof! What do I care?' I cried, gazing around my poor garden—or rather I must have fairly snorted, for he looked down quickly and took in the situation at a glance, gave a whistle and added: 'I see, you'll be planted in; but, marm, that's what's got to happen in a pushing city—it don't stop even for graveyards, but just plants 'em in.'
"My afternoon sun gone. Not for one minute in the day will its light rest on my garden, and finis is already written on it, and I see it an arid mud bank. I wonder if you can realize, you open-air Barbara, with your garden and fields and all space around you, how a city-bred woman, to whom crowds are more vital than nature, still loves her back yard. I had a cockney nature calendar planted in mine, that began with a bunch of snowdrops, ran through hot poppy days, and ended in a glow of chrysanthemums, but all the while I worked among these I felt the breath of civilization about me and the solid pavement under my feet.
"I believe that every woman primarily has concealed in the three rounded corners of her heart, waiting development, love of home, love of children, and love of nature, and my nature love has yet only developed to the size of a back yard.
"Yes, I will come to visit you at Oaklands gladly, though it's a poor compliment under the circumstances. The mother of twins should be gone to; but tremble! you may never get rid of me, for I may supplant Martha Corkle, the miraculous, in spoiling the boys."
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"February 1st.