ID their grandmother have a garden? A big, old-fashioned garden, with a broad path running down through the centre, and great beds of purple and white petunias, pink and white lady's-slippers, and deep yellow marigolds on each side of the path, and 'way down at the end, near the white barn, masses of snowy day-lilies and big crimson peonies? Yours did. And besides the beautiful flowers, there were fruits which were very wonderful when you were only seven, and you were allowed to have for your very own all that fell to the ground.

Such pears! Juicy yellow Bartletts, tiny Seckels, and big red-cheeked Flemish Beauties! Then there was the apricot-tree, and over near the pansy-bed the peach-tree that had the very biggest peaches you could even imagine when you were only seven! And then the arbors where big blue grapes and little pink ones hung temptingly-can you ever forget the joy of that first bunch of grapes in the early fall which grandfather cut for you? Do you remember how you had watched them for three long weeks, from that day when you had seen the first faint flush of purple begin to steal across them? You have seen wonderful vineyards since then in many wonderful lands, but you have never seen any grapes like those Isabellas which hung on an arbor, just out of reach, in grandmother's garden when you were only seven.

Grandmother's garden and grandmother's house! The magic of those words! It had always been so ever since you were a tiny bit

of a rosy-cheeked, yellow-haired, blue-eyed baby girl in that little white fur coat-"I want to go to my grandmother's house," you would say, and your lip would begin to quiver if Mary Ellen looked unwilling. "My grandmother's house is the betterest house in all the world!" You have been at many worldfamous inns since those long-ago days, you have" eaten your bread and salt, you have drunk your water and wine," at boards which even kings have not disdained, but, honestly, now, have you ever in your life eaten anything one-half so good as those buckwheat cakes which grandmother had for breakfast every morning from November until May? Don't you remember to this day the taste of that thick maple syrup, real maple right from grandfather's old home in the Green Mountain State? What are terrapin and truffles compared with that?

And yet the joys of the house (not even forgetting the great stone jar of "Jimmie-Johnsons " which grandmother always left within easy reach of little hands) were not to be spoken of in the same breath with the dear delights of grandmother's garden.

It was down the little path, near Pie-Plant Hill, that you wheeled your wicker carriage in which, very stiff and straight (except just at the neck), and wrapped in bright red flannel pilfered from grandmother's work-basket, sat those two strange "dolls" you once rescued from an ignominious trap in the kitchen pantry and played with for two days until even grandmother said sternly that they must be thrown away. Uncle Harry had christened them Dilly and Dally, because, he

said, they had loitered too long. But you never could understand Uncle Harry when you were in grandmother's garden, and only seven!

And surely there is no brighter spot in memory than those happy hours you spent in the white barn playing "house" with your little friend Edith. Grandfather's broad low red phaeton was the beautiful mansion in which you and Edith and your children dwelt, in that wonderful Land of Make-Believe. Edith was always the father, because even when she walked on the outside of the pavement she was a little bit taller, and you were always the mother. And such quantities of children as you had, all Edith's dolls and your dolls. And 'most every day there would be a new baby to take care of (for the toyman's store was only three doors below grandmother's house, and five pennies would buy marvellous things), and you and Edith would be just as surprised to see it as though you had not spent half an hour at the toy-man's picking it out, and you would say to her in

deep despair, "Father, what are we going to do with this one?" There was no "race suicide" in the world when you were in grandmother's garden and only seven!

Then when you grew tired of playing "house," do you remember the wonderful cemeteries you and Edith used to make down by the "Jack" rose-bush? The little mounds with gay lady's-slippers and tiny pansies stuck in them here and there, and the curious, winding paths that you made with your finger, connecting the gay little graves? And then, sometimes when you played there, that thought would come to you about eternity; you were only seven, but you had heard the minister preach that going on forever, and forever, and forever, like a wheel that could not stop, until your poor little brain buzzed and a queer, horrible feeling of fear swept over you. Dear little brown-haired Edith, it was not long before she learned the meaning of eternity, and you went down into grandmother's garden, and there, under the "Jack rose-bush, you cried and sobbed with that first terrible poign

ant grief of childhood. And then, when your grief had spent itself, you raised your tearstained eyes to the blue sky and the little white clouds that were like the masses of angels' heads in the picture over your bed, and you thought that perhaps somewhere up there Edith was watching you, and that though she was very, very happy up in heaven, as grandmother had told you, she was a little lonely because you were not there, and she didn't know any of the little girls in heaven very well. And you kissed your hand to her, and tried to smile, because you knew she would feel even more lonely if she should see you cry.

And not very long after that some one told you that it was "bad luck" to play at making graves, and because you believed in every "bad sign" you had ever heard of, from seeing the moon over your left shoulder to picking up a pin by the point, and because it was different down there under the "Jack" rosebush now that Edith had gone, you gave up that curious pastime.

It was really down in grandmother's garden that you first learned how to pray. Of course, good little Presbyterian that you were, you had always said your "Now I lay mie" every night before you jumped into bed, but that

was different, somehow. Don't you remember how frightened you were every time you heard the thunder, and how the darkness terrified you? There were always such awful things waiting to grab you the minute the light was blown out! Can't you still see grandmother's old Maggie as she sat there on the bench under the Bartlett pear-tree, and told you how wicked it was for a little girl to be afraid when the blessed saints were watching over her day and night? Don't you remember that she taught you to cross yourself every time you felt "afraid," and to say, "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now, and in the hour of our death, Amen"? And, terrible sinner that you were, you crossed yourself and prayed every time the thunder pealed, and every time you were alone in the black darkness, for that was the most awful thing in all the world. And sometimes the little hand forgot just how to make the cross, and you had to do it over twice before you could get it right, but you always felt braver after it was done, and the little prayer to the Virgin Mother that you learned in grandmother's garden, down under the old pear-tree, when you were only seven, filled your tiny baby soul with a peace and courage that a saint of God might have envied.

Do you remember how you fixed your paper dolls (those glorious creatures cut from Aunty Nell's fashion papers) in a row on the broad bench that stood under the back piazza, and played school"? The wistaria - vine that grandmother's mother had planted kept most of the wind away, and it was only now and then that any of your children went sailing off through the air. Do you remember how you had them all named and aged on the back? Uncle Harry did it for you because you couldn't spell very well when you were only seven. There were "Adele Foster, 71⁄2 yrs.,' "Beatrice Dunwreathe, 10 yrs." (she was almost old enough to die, really), "Lily Carleton, 634 yrs.," ," "Jessie Lee, 8 yrs.," and a heap of others. Then you would get out your slate and pencil and do a great big sum -that would be Adele doing the sum, you know-and then you would look in the back of your little arithmetic, and you would find that somehow your answer was not quite like the answer in the back of the book (for sums were not your strong point), and then Adele Foster, 71⁄2 years, would get a bad mark, and Beatrice, Jessie, Lily, or whoever happened to be next in line would do the sum, and perhaps get it right (you usually got it right the third time), and then the luckless Adele, 71⁄2 years, would " go down one."

It was the same way with the reading-class -you could read better than you could do anything else when you were in grandmother's garden and only seven. There was that wonderful Child's History of England that told all about the kings and queens and the unhappy lives most of them led, and that big third reader with its beloved chapter from Little Women. You can never forget "Daisy and Demi lived in a world of their own, peopled with lovely and grotesque creatures, to whom they gave the queerest names, and with whom they played the queerest games."

But you loved the story of Joan of Arc the best of all, and you made the paper dolls read it over so often that you grew to know some of it by heart, and to this day you can repeat: "He had a daughter, Joan of Arc, who was at this time in her twentieth year. She had been a solitary girl from her childhood; she had often tended sheep and cattle for whole days where no human figure was seen or human voice heard; and she had often knelt, for hours together, in the gloomy, empty little village chapel, looking up at the altar and at the dim lamp burning before it, until

she fancied that she saw shadowy figures standing there and even that she heard them speak to her." You rather resented the fancied," because you knew that she had heard them speak to her. Had not the fairies often talked to you down by the great, sweetsmelling syringa-bush in grandmother's garden, when you were only seven? How you wished that they had told you to ride on a great white war-horse, and to have a flag, with the picture of God on it, carried before you!

But old Abby was jet-black. The only thing white about her was the white barn where she ate her oats and slept. So perhaps it was just as well that the fairies had not issued any commands, for you would have been frightened to death on any other horse. Then, too, who would have played "school" with Adele Foster, 71⁄2 years, and Beatrice Dunwreathe, 10 years, if you had gone out on a war-horse at the head of an army?

Then came that never-to-be-forgotten day when you were lying down on the grass near the path that led to the white barn, looking up at the sky, and wondering lazily what kept the sun from tumbling down on top of you, and you heard some one come down the back steps, and in a minute grandmother was sitting on the grass, and you were in her lap, and her arms were around you just as tight as though she never meant to let you get away. Grandmother's eyes were red, just as if she had been crying, but of course grandmothers never did that. Only little girls and tiny babies ever cried. You thought she must have a headache, and you rubbed her forehead with your cool little hand. Grandmother did not say anything for a moment. Then holding you very tight, she told you that father was going to be a lawyer in the big city of New York, and that he was going to make a great deal of money, and that you were going away to live. "Away from the garden?" you cried. "Yes, away from everything," grandmother said, and more than ever her eyes looked as though she had been doing what only little girls and tiny babies did, and her voice sounded just as it had the day that she told you that Edith had gone to heaven.

Then grandmother talked a little more to you, and she kissed you many times before she went back into the house. After she had left you you sat very still for several minutes. thinking very hard, and suddenly you knew just what it all meant. You had an awful ache in your throat, and you swallowed with