A Suburban Garden [pp. 408-411]

A Suburban Garden.
They were pretty home meadows, with
dry paths, which he had carefully measured, so that he knew when he had
walked a mile, which, in his failing
health, he considered a good "constitutional." Some member of the family
was always ready to be his walking companion. On one side the lands slope
upwards to the Cudham woods; on the
other side down to the Vale of Keston.
In the distance was the high ridge of
Sydenham, with the shining towers of
the Crystal Palace.
In lashing strictures on Charles Darwin's lack of faith, because his theories
upset the old idea of an instantaneous
creation, there is one sentence in his
book that Christians overlook. It runs
thus: "When through successive evolutionary developments the body of man
was prepared for his spirit, it required
another creative fiat to implant the soul
within that body." It is for this little
sentence that the school of strict and
avowed materialists disown Charles
Darwin as a brother.
L. A. ANash.
A SUBURBAN GARDEN.
Translat-d ferom the French.
As one of the greatest delights of my
childhood, I recall the visits we used to
pay our cousins, in their garden at the
Faubourg Neuf, on summer Sundays. I
have retained even the least details of
these Sundays, invariable details moreover, from the harsh grating of the entrance gate to the feigned surprise of
Hector and Hersilie, who were not expecting to see us, "In this sun!" The
canary piped his notes, always the same;
Hector gave us a tap on the cheek in the
same place; Hersilie, a kiss; and Jacquette a lump of sugar, taken, with her
mistress's permission, from a certain
box with gilded nails, which the careful
woman kept double locked, a habit that
certainly dated from the continental
blockade.
I seem to hear my father's greeting:
"How now! Always young, Cousin
Hector?"
Pure flattery, between you and me;
for the good man, as well as Hersilie, his
younger sister, had long since passed the
flower of youth. As far back as I can
renmember they had both of them been
old; Hector, quite lean and long, with
small silver rings in his ears, and the
traces of the conquering air of an old
beau on his faded form; Hersilie, very
plump, very simple, infirm, alas! coughing one minute, limping the next, alert
though, and with beaming eyes behind
her gold-rimmed glasses.
Those two, brother and sister, made a
pretty pair of crayon pictures.
And the frame was well chosen; the
frame, that is to say, the garden.
The garden you can see this moment,
can you not? You have before you the
sphinxes in terra cotta, supporting the
Pompadour arches on the pillars of the
gateway, a gateway necessarily painted
green; you have divined the inevitable
straight walk bordered with lavender,
the muscat trellis, the yoke-elm summer
house, the clump of orange trees, the
pyramidal stand for illumination lamps,
the umbrella-like plane tree, all nature
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[October