Mary Garden

“ Might not a man offer her that which was finer than gold, greater than material success? Might not a man offer her a life which had to do with life and love—might he not share with her this opportunity to make this garden in the sand-hills bloom?
And now, while the mocking-birds sang madly, Roger Poole saw Mary—here beside him on the porch on a morning like this, with the lilacs waving perfumed plumes of mauve and white, with the birds flashing in blue and scarlet and gold from pine to magnolia, and from magnolia back to pine—with the sky unclouded, the air fresh and sweet. ”

“ Billy Plans the Garden “MARY FRANCES,” called Billy, as she came into the house, “I say, let’s start work in your garden to-day. The first thing to do is to dig and spade it.”
“Oh, Billy, it looks as though it had been done,” answered Mary Frances. “I guess I can plant it right away.”
“Ha! Ha!” laughed Billy. “Why, it has to be dug deep; the earth has to be turned under, and compost mixed with it and all pulverized before little seeds or plants can take hold with their roots.” ”

“ Though she never could have been as lovely as Mary, for she lacked Mary’s earnest eyes and the reposeful strength which supplemented her prettiness; though Jane and Florimel both far outshone her in beauty, yet Mrs. Garden must have been at their age a remarkably pretty girl, with a childish appeal, and a little manner that demanded and inspired service from all of her world. ”

“ And her tale of love the sweetest that my ear has ever heard.
O the flower of all the forest was Mary Littlechild;
There's few could be so dear to me and none could be so fair.
While many love the garden flowers I still esteem the wild,
And Mary of the forest is the fairest blossom there.
She's fairer than the may flowers that bloom among the thorn,
She's dearer to my eye than the rose upon the brere ”

“ We have the image in our mind of Mary as she stood with her little hat and wreath of rosebuds, her fluttering ribbons and rich brocade, as it were a picture framed in the doorway, with her back to the illuminated garden, and her calm, innocent face regarding with a pleased wonder the unaccustomed gaieties within. ”

“ She ran out of the room, and Mary stood by the fire and twisted her thin little hands together with sheer pleasure.
"If I have a spade," she whispered, "I can make the earth nice and soft and dig up weeds. If I have seeds and can make flowers grow the garden won't be dead at all—it will come alive." ”

“ Despite her Scottish birth she has remained invincibly Yankee. Despite long residence in her beloved Paris, enough American has rubbed off on her, and the resilient, dynamic, overflowing, and proud spirit that informs her art and character are American or nothing. Race counts. Can any good come out of our Nazareth of art? The answer is inevitable: Yes, Mary Garden. She is Our Mary. Lyrically, dramatically ours, yet an orchid. Dear old Flaubert forcibly objected to Sarah Bernhardt being called “a social expression.” ”

“ If the reader has been led to expect a chapter devoted to an account of Mary Garden in Aphrodite, he will be disappointed. I did not see Mary Garden that evening, nor for many evenings thereafter, and I do not remember, indeed, that Peter Whiffle ever referred to her again. We dined at a quiet little restaurant, Boilaive by name, near the Folies-Bergère. The interior, as bare of decoration as are most such interiors in Paris, where the food and wines are given more consideration than the mural paintings, was no larger than that of a small shop. ”

“ And now by slow and beautiful degrees the cold and naked young year grew warm, and expanded from weeping, shivering infancy into the delighted consciousness of happy childhood. The first snowdrops, the earliest aconites, perked up their pretty heads in Mary's cottage garden, and throughout all nature there came that inexplicable, indefinite, soft pulsation of new life and new love which we call the spring. ”

“ FOR two or three minutes he stood looking round him, while Mary watched him, and then he began to walk about softly, even more lightly than Mary had walked the first time she had found herself inside the four walls. His eyes seemed to be taking in everything—the gray trees with the gray creepers climbing over them and hanging from their branches, the tangle on the walls and among the grass, the evergreen alcoves with the stone seats and tall flower urns standing in them. ”

“ But Mary, following vigorously in his wake with hoe and rake, spurred him on with visions of the good things they should have to eat and the fortune they should make selling fresh garden stuff to the summer campers, till he caught some of her indomitable spirit, and really grew interested in the work. Mary confined her energies to the vegetables which she knew would grow in that locality, and which would be sure to find a ready sale, but Norman gradually enlarged the borders to make experiments of his own, till all the lot back of the house was a well tilled garden. ”

“ Brought up under the care of a father so wise and loving, Mary grew up like the flowers of her garden, fresh as the rose, pure like the lily, modest as the violet, and full of promise for the future, as a beautiful shrub in the time of flourishing. ”

“ Frances and Mary Jane got the idea in a minute and they set to work in a jiffy. Such fun as it was! The houses and barns and churches grew so rapidly that none of the girls gave a minute's thought to pricked fingers—there wasn't time! When the stock of burrs was entirely used up, Alice set the houses along in a straight line as though they were on a street. Frances put the barns back of the houses where they belonged and Mary Jane ran to her garden for nasturtiums to lay by the houses for gardens.
"But we haven't any dolls to live in the houses!" exclaimed Frances suddenly. ”

“ No, they haven’t outgrown fairy folk, at least Mary Frances hasn’t, for that is a part of this story—how Feather Flop, the rooster, and Jack-in-the-Pulpit and Bouncing Bet, the fairies of the wood, helped teach her to garden.
But in their study and work, Mary Frances and Billy learned more than that—they learned to appreciate what a wonderful amount of energy is expended by Mother Nature in growing one little plant from a seed; how careful she is that nothing be wasted; and what pleasure there is in tilling the soil, and helping things grow! ”

“ I climbed on the fence and sat looking over in the deserted garden.
Round the corner of the house next door somebody came. I saw a long, gray plaid shawl, with torn and flapping tassels, pinned about a small figure, with long legs. As she put her hand on the latch, she flashed me her smile, and it was Mary Elizabeth. She went immediately inside the shed door, and left me staring. What was she doing there? What unexpected places I was always seeing her. Why should she go in the woodshed of the New Family whom we didn’t even know ourselves? ”

“ Fancy the little, lovely royal child, with her four Marys, her playfellows, her child maids of honor, with their little hands and feet, and their innocent and happy eyes, pattering about that garden all that time ago, laughing, and running, and gardening as only children do and can. As is well known, Mary was placed by her mother in this Isle of Rest before sailing from the Clyde for France. There is something “that tirls the heartstrings a’ to the life” in standing and looking on this unmistakable living relic of that strange and pathetic old time. ”

“ Mary Jane never felt so big, and grown-up and important in her life as when she made those trenches with her bright new hoe. She worked and worked till they were neat and even and exactly right. Then her father stopped his digging and together they opened three packages and planted the seeds. The nasturtiums went in front, because they were the smallest plants, father said; then the Marygolds that grow so straight and tall; and then, because father said every garden should have something useful as well as something beautiful, back of the Marygolds, a row of early lettuce. ”

“ The spirit of comradeship and of loving understanding of little men and women thoroughly permeates this unique garden book. The enchantment of the story of Mary Frances’ gardens successfully carries the play-lesson idea, as the most potent method of creating a love for work and learning, into a realm undreamed of before. The little reader’s delight is heightened by cut-out gardens which are inserted in the book. These cut-out gardens are beautifully colored to show the natural color of the flowers, insects, etc. ”

“ Us'd be just two children watchin' a garden grow, an' he'd be another. Two lads an' a little lass just lookin' on at th' springtime. I warrant it'd be better than doctor's stuff."
"He's been lying in his room so long and he's always been so afraid of his back that it has made him queer," said Mary. "He knows a good many things out of books but he doesn't know anything else. He says he has been too ill to notice things and he hates going out of doors and hates gardens and gardeners. But he likes to hear about this garden because it is a secret. ”

“ He said it in such an odd way that Mary wondered if he was actually a little sorry for her. She had never felt sorry for herself; she had only felt tired and cross, because she disliked people and things so much. But now the world seemed to be changing and getting nicer. If no one found out about the secret garden, she should enjoy herself always. ”

“ You don't see it in rooms if you are ill."
"It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine, and things pushing up and working under the earth," said Mary. "If the garden was a secret and we could get into it we could watch the things grow bigger every day, and see how many roses are alive. Don't you see? Oh, don't you see how much nicer it would be if it was a secret?"
He dropped back on his pillow and lay there with an odd expression on his face. ”

“ How [174] soon did you say, Billy, we could take the radishes and lettuce to Mother?”
“About day after to-morrow,” answered Billy, examining the vegetables closely again. “And a picking of peas in about ten days.”
“Oh, goody! I love the vegetable garden almost as well as the flower garden,” cried Mary Frances, “although the flowers are so interesting and are growing beautifully. Come, let us go look to see if any are ready to bloom,” leading the way to the front garden. ”

“ I have taught them several of the pretty songs; you should hear their piping voices—and with their picture books and their gardens, they are very busy and happy indeed.
Their mother is positively illumined by the change her young folks. Never in her life has she seen any country but this one of charred pines and sand. I find her bending over the Cinderella book, liking it, and liking the children's little gardens.
"We ain't never had no flower garden," she confided to me. ”

“ Between the pink of the Baby Rambler and the blue of the eupatorium is a bush of feverfew; and between the blue of the eupatorium and the yellow of the rudbeckia is the white of achillea.
Mary Frances says that she thinks that these [366] flowers form the most perfect color-picture in her garden.
On the other side of the garden are perennial sunflowers which are so much more desirable than golden glow, and beneath them are brilliant nasturtiums.
One must remember that the various shades of one color always combine well together. ”

“ To think of going over the moor in the daylight and when the sky was blue! To think of going into the cottage which held twelve children!
"Does she think Mrs. Medlock would let me go?" she asked, quite anxiously.
"Aye, she thinks she would. She knows what a tidy woman mother is and how clean she keeps the cottage."
"If I went I should see your mother as well as Dickon," said Mary, thinking it over and liking the idea very much. "She doesn't seem to be like the mothers in India."
Her work in the garden and the excitement of the afternoon ended by making her feel quiet and thoughtful. ”

“ The first stayed with the woman whom Nathan knew — the woman who, Mary Ann almost thought, was still darning socks by the table beneath the light. Only a soul was here in the garden — her soul that loved light and color and was strangely capable of guilt. ”

“ Mary Jane ran as fast as ever she could till she caught up with her grandfather and got a firm hold of his hand. Then she felt better: for when a little girl doesn't know what is going on, she wants to have hold of something—you know how that is yourself. Bob led them out of the corner of the garden; across the small cornfield back of the barn; across the pasture and into the woods beyond. There he stopped and sniffed in the bushes and through the dead leaves in what Mary Jane thought was the most curious way she had ever seen a dog act. ”

“ She hesitated; then rose, reaching for her sun helmet. A dilapidated wall encircled the camp, and a few aloes struggled for existence by the tumble-down stones.
Mary climbed the stones, refusing assistance from the American, until she perched on the summit of the garden wall. Here she could overlook the activity in the camp as she listened. ”

“ But even though she was disappointed and a bit doubtful, she went down to the front porch and sat on the step where she could see father the minute he turned the corner of Fifth Street.
"Isn't this a fine day to be out of doors!" exclaimed Mrs. Merrill, contentedly. "See Mr. Robin out there, digging away for his family? He has a hard time hunting worms in the grass. I expect he wishes we had a newly dug garden around this place." Mary Jane looked up indifferently, just in time to see a twinkle in her mother's eye. Did the twinkle have anything to do with the secret? Mary Jane wondered. ”