There were narrow paths bordered with dusty dwarf-box, with queer-shaped
flower-beds bearing four-o'clocks, touch-me-nots, phlox, azaleas, and
sweet-william. Then there were beds upon beds of a flower no Northerner
ever sees,--the old-fashioned pink, before gardeners, wiser than their
Maker, attempted to graft it. In its heavy, double beauty it always
bursts its calyx and falls of its own weight of fragrance, to lie
prostrate on the ground, dying of its own heavy sweetness. Against a
crumbling wall were tea-roses. In another spot grew a great pink
cabbage rose, as flat as a plate when in full bloom, with its inner
leaves still so tightly crinkled that its golden heart was never
revealed except by a child's curious investigating fingers. And
curiously twisting in and out of the branches of this rose-tree was a
honeysuckle vine. Over one end of the porch climbed a purple clematis.
Over the other a Cherokee rose. But the great glory of the garden was
over against the southern wall, where roses of every sort bloomed in
riotous profusion. Evidently they bloomed of their own sweet will, and
with little care, for the garden was almost as neglected as the rest of
the place.