The Incomparable One is waiting. We dismount, and he takes my horse, out of deference to age and general incapacity. My comrades take charge of their own. We have learned it all—how saddles come off and what you do with them; how bridles come off and where to put them; what to do with the horses and why. What a world of fun it is! The sugar is brought, and glistening necks arch and gentle lips fondle the sweet offering lying in the flat palms of little hands. And then to the house, to talk it all over again with the world’s most attentive listener.
When bedtime comes, I see a light in the stable and go down to find the Incomparable One in the tiny saddle-room.
Somehow that last gallop has made me feel a bit more his peer. So the talk is once more easy, and for an hour it runs. Shrewd, kindly, brave the old man is, and somehow I feel that his body has been kept young and strong, his soul serene and sweet, by his simple, whole-hearted love of horse.
BLESSED BE THE GARDEN
BLESSED BE THE GARDEN
I had as soon read fairy stories to my children in the Congressional Library as to walk in some of the gardens I have seen. For me a garden should be part of one’s abode, simply another room to step into when the mood requires, a place for early morning investigation and for evening solitude. And such a garden is mine. Why gardens should be made solely a place of exhibition, why they should be tortured into tedious formality and used only on social occasions, is a mystery to me.
Like a good many other things, the use made of gardens by their owners depends a great deal on the owner’s attitude toward gardens in general.
I am familiar with two; one the grand manner, which dismisses all details to underlings and which accepts the garden simply as a useful decorative accessory of a highly ornamental life. This manner, for the most obvious of reasons, is not mine. Nor do I accept the over-intimate and prying fussiness of some garden owners: those good people who tell you they know every plant and every flower, who dilate on the doubtful pleasure of doing all the work themselves, who brazenly acclaim the fact that the garden has no secrets from them.