Ebook Garden of Peace

These little irregular back-gardens are places of enchantment to me; and I think I like those behind the smallest of the shops, which are not more than thirty feet square, rather than those higher up the town, of a full acre or two. These bigger ones do not suggest a history beyond the memory of the gardeners who trim the hedges and cut the grass with a machine. The small and irregular ones suggest a good deal more than a maiden lady wearing gloves, with a basket on her arm and a pair of snipping Shears opening its jaws to bite the head off every bloom that has a touch of brown on its edge. But with me it is not a matter of liking and not liking; it is a matter of liking and liking better — it is the artisan's Opinion of rival beers (pre war): all good but some better than others. The little gardens behind the shops are lyrics; the big one behind the villas are excellent prose, and excellent prose is frequently quite as prosy as excellent verse.