"I can put my finger right on it."
"You'll find it," said Mrs. Vedder, "in the chapter on
'Hedges.'"
"You are wrong, my dear," he responded, "it is in 'Mistakes of
Citizens in Country Life.'"
He turned the leaves eagerly.
"No," he said, "here it is in 'Rural Taste.' Let me read you the
passage, Mr.--"
"Grayson."
"--Mr. Grayson. The Chinaman's name was Lieu-tscheu. 'What is
it,' asks this old Chinaman, 'that we seek in the pleasure of a
garden? It has always been agreed that these plantations should
make men amends for living at a distance from what would be their
more congenial and agreeable dwelling-place--in the midst of
nature, free and unrestrained.'"
"That's it," I exclaimed, "and the old Chinaman was right! A
garden excuses civilization."
"It's what brought us here," said Mrs. Vedder.
With that we fell into the liveliest discussion of gardening and
farming and country life in all their phases, resolving that
while there were bugs and blights, and droughts and floods, yet
upon the whole there was no life so completely satisfying as life
in which one may watch daily the unfolding of natural life.
A hundred things we talked about freely that had often risen
dimly in my own mind almost to the point--but not quite--of
spilling over into articulate form.
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