A Breeze from the Woods, 2nd Ed.

by W. C. Bartlett

"Yes, I think it has told this morning. Never mind the damages; but I think you had better cut his wings," said our neighbor, already placated.

That bird was given away before the next sunset. But O! friend; by the guns of Alcatraz, and the white doves that alighted on the chimney-tops, emblems of war and peace, send us no more game chickens, to disturb the peace of the hill, or to finish the work of destruction begun on that unlucky morning.

From the hill one may look out of the Golden Gate, as through the tube of a telescope, and see all the watery waste and eternal scene-shifting beyond. When the dull, undulating hummocks look like a drove of camels in the desert, you may be sure that the newly-married couple just embarking on the outward-bound steamer, on a bridal tour to Los Angeles or the Hawaiian Islands, will cease their caroling and chirping within an hour. Half an hour after sunset, if the atmosphere is clear, one may see the wide-off light of the Farallones; the nearer lights of Point Bonita and Alcatraz, almost in line, dwarfed to mere fire-flies now; but when the Gate has lost the glow of its burnished gold, these great sea-lamps, hung over this royal avenue, tell an honest home story for the battered ships low down on the horizon.

The little tugs which round under the quarters of the great wheat ships and rush them out to sea, know how to overcome the inertia of the great hulks. They tug spitefully, but the ship has to move, and you see the white sails already beginning to fall down from the yards, for the work where the blue water begins. It may be a grotesque association, but have you never seen a small woman, with a wonderful concentration of energy, tug her great lazy hulk of a husband out into the broad field of earnest endeavor in much the same way? Once there, his inertia overcome, the feminine tow-line cast off, he did brave and honest work, making the race quite abreast of average men. But the woman, who tugged him from his lazy anchorage out into a good offing, did as much for that man as he ever did for himself. Nothing more fortunate can happen to a great many men than that they be towed out to sea early. And in not a few instances, nothing more unfortunate could happen than that they should ever return. This last remark would have been softened a little, had it not been repeated with emphasis by a tender-hearted woman.

Just after a winter rain, there are occasionally realistic views of the great city in the foreground, which are so ugly that one never forgets them. The hills are brought nigh; all the houses seem to rise out of the desert, and along the water front the spars of shipping look like a forest which has been blasted by some devouring flame. It is certain that these forests will never sprout again; and there is such a dead look that, were it not for the little tugs going back and forth, one might imagine that all men had hastened away, and left the city to silence and the desert. But after nightfall the thousand lamps glorify the city; the blackened forest along the water front has faded out; and a mild sort of charity steals over one, suggesting that, after all, it is a goodly city set upon a hill, and that its peculiar beauty is not alone in appearing to the best advantage by gaslight. The background of hills is more angular and jerky than ever before, because all the softening effect has been taken out of the atmosphere. There is no distance, no dreamy haze to spread like a gossamer veil over these hard outlines. Nature is wonderfully honest and self-revealing. Evidently these hills were never finished. They lack all the rounded beauty, all the gentle curves and slopes, and all the fine touches of a perfected work. They look as if, when in a plastic state, they had been set by the jerk of an earthquake. Who knows but another jerk might take these kinks out and tone down all these stiff angles, and otherwise put on the finishing touches? If it must be done in this way, let the softening undulations be as gentle as possible. It is very inconvenient to get up in the morning and find that the chimney-top is either on the garden walk, or that it has been turned three-quarters round, in the very wantonness and devilment of Nature.

Some day there will be a closer recognized relation between landscape gardening and landscape painting. If the work is done badly in either department, it will make little difference whether an acre of canvas is hung upon the wall, or whether lines have been badly drawn and colors crudely laid on to an acre of earth. The style of trimming trees so that they are a libel on Nature, and the geometrical diagrams worked up in a garden, can hardly be referred to any very high standard of art. But if my neighbor is delighted with trees representing spindles, ramrods, paint brushes, cylinders, cones, and what not, I would no more quarrel with him than with the man who is under the pleasing delusion that he is an artist, because, in a more remote way, he has been traducing Nature with certain grotesque figures laid on to canvas.

A hedge will bear cutting into line, because it is to be treated as nothing more than the frame of the landscape to be worked up. The former may be as stiff and artificial in its way, as a gilt or mahogany frame, and do no violence to good taste; if it hides an ugly fence, a point has been gained. One cannot expect much diversity of surface on a single acre. A large lawn will give the effect of greater flatness. If you find the hired gardener, bred in some noted school in Europe, setting out trees in straight lines, exhort him to penitence at once. If he remain obdurate, cut the trees down with your little hatchet and pitch them over the fence, but keep your temper as sweet as a June morning. He will see by that time that you have ideas to be respected. Grouping the trees, on the lawn and elsewhere, neutralizes, in part, the effect of a flat surface; it is better than the poor apology of a little hillock, which suggests an ant's nest, or that a coyote may be burrowing in that vicinity. Something may be done in the way of massing colors with annuals to produce good effects. But ribbon gardening, according to the patterns laid down by florists, has no nearer relation to art in landscape gardening than crochet work has to landscape painting. It is a fantastic trick, which may very well please rural clowns, but is in some sort an offense to good taste.

Neither is it necessary that all the trees and shrubs which a florist has for sale should be admitted to the private garden. More than one-half of them have no merit; they neither set off the grounds, nor have any peculiarity worth a moment's attention. They figure in the florist's list under very attractive names, but if taken home they will probably prove but scrubby little bushes, fit only to be dedicated to the rubbish-heap and the annual bon-fire in the Spring. A plant or a shrub which gives no pleasure either in its form or the color of its flower, and has no suggestive associations, may do well enough for a botanical garden. Many of us may like occasionally to look at a hippopotamus or an elephant in the menagerie, or at the zoological gardens, but we don't want these specimens brought home to our private grounds. Some of the sequoia gigantea family do very well in the forest. Once in a lifetime we can afford to make a journey to look at them. But why undertake to bring home one of these vegetable elephants as a specimen, when we know that it will require a thousand years for its growth, and that most of us will come a little short of that measure of time? Some trees may be planted for posterity, and others may be safely left to take their chances. If any one wishes to contemplate upon his grounds a shrub of the future dimensions of one of the Calaveras group, let him plant it at once. Most of the vegetable monsters went out with the ichthyosaurus, and as for the few that remain, they will yet be an affront to the pigmies who are swarming on the earth.

"Why did we plant cherry trees along the rear fence?" To make friends with the birds and the children. You can get more songs from the birds, and more of song and glee from the children, on a small investment in cherry trees than in any other way. Those last year's birds' nests tell the story. The robin, thrush, oriole and linnet will come early and stay late. Groups of children will come in the front way, and will never be so happy as when invited to go down the rear garden walk, unless in the supremest moments when they step from your shoulders into the trees, and never come back until they have closed their fingers on the last cherry. The man who is not satisfied to divide all his cherries with the birds and the children is a curmudgeon; notably so is he who plants cherry trees in front of his lot, and gets into a white heat of rage because boys of average Sunday school antecedents could not resist the temptation to borrow the fruit. Besides, the eclectic judgment of children, the sparrow, the yellow-jacket and the honey-bee will always tell you where the best nectarines and plums may be found.

It is well to reserve a nook for little experiments in horticulture or floriculture which one wishes to make. A great many theories may be brought home and decently buried, or be made to sprout in such a corner. The larger the spaces, the more one will be tempted to use the spade at odd hours; and none of us has yet found out all the remedial qualities of dry earth freshly turned over day after day. A hard day's work, taxing brain more than hands, brings on a degree of nervous irritability. There is a dry electrical atmosphere; the attrition of trade winds and sand half the year; and the rushing to and fro of busy and excited men, charged as full of electricity as they can hold, and bent upon charging everybody else, so that at nightfall the sparks will snap at the finger-ends, and the air will crackle like a brush-heap just set on fire. Now, the earth is a very good conductor. It is better to let this surplus electricity run down the fingers on to the spade, and along its shining steel blade into the ground, than to blow up your best friend. An hour of honest battle with the weeds is better than any domestic thunder storm. By that time the sun will have dropped down into the ocean, just beyond the Golden Gate, glorifying garden and hill-top, and setting, for a moment, its lamp of flame in the western windows. Every plant and shrub will have some part in a subtile and soothing ministry; and then, if ever, it will occur to you that this is a mellow old world after all.