flowers on his dining-table, and often visited the parterre fleuriste, which was part of the kitchen garden, where he chose the flowers he wished to use, and commented on the training of the espaliered fruit under De la Quintinye's care. There were several reasons for the banishment of flowers from the immediate neighborhood of the palaces. In the first place, there was nothing like the amount of glass for starting seeds and cuttings which we now have; nor were there great nursery gardens like our modern ones, where we can order a hundred thousand bulbs or seedlings with no more uncertainty about their delivery than if we wanted fifty. In old times collectors had to be sent to the places where the bulbs grew naturally, thence to dispatch them to the gardens. Neither was there anything like our variety of flowers to choose from, as the old-fashioned kinds about which we hear so much were, in most cases, the small and dull-colored ancestors of our hardy perennials, for in those happy days the accursed race of bedding plants had not yet appeared. The fact that many of the country châteaux were inhabited or had to be habitable all the year, made it necessary to use the unchanging colors of the parterre de broderie close to the house, rather than a flower-garden which the winter frosts would have made unspeakably dreary. Although Le Nôtre's life was a long and a busy one, he could not possibly have designed all the gardens with which his name is now associated, more or less correctly. The list is an astounding one, ranging as it does from Aranjuez and La Granja in Spain to Wilhelmshöhe and Oranienbourg in Germany; from the Villas Albani and Pamphili in Rome to Hampton Court and Kensington Gardens in England. But directly or indirectly he is responsible for the spirit of all these designs, as he created a school of outdoor art, which, modified and adapted to suit various conditions and climates, spread over the civilized world, and is the foundation of all the landscape art of to-day. It was he who first released gardens from their mediæval swaddling clothes, widened their narrow borders, did away with their childish decorations of fantastically clipped trees, and made them instead dignified parts of a splendid whole. To some people his gardens do not now seem attractive, on account of what is called their severity and coldness, but we must remember that they were entirely appropriate to the places for which they were designed, and perfectly fitted for their uses, and are consequently artistically admirable. W By Katharine Holland Brown ILLUSTRATIONS BY WALTER APPLETON CLARK ITHOUT, the March storm eddied and beat, with rocking clamor of bitter wind and freezing wash of rain. Within, the low crimsonwalled gallery with its blazing hearth, its shaded lights, its broad low leathern chairs, worn each into a sheath of ease, seemed a fastness of peace after the fretting bluster outside. Yet for all its coaxing comfort, there were not a dozen people in the room. And there had not been a score on any day since Prescott's little exhibit had opened. It had stormed every hour since the morning the pictures were hung, Prescott thought to himself. He was sorry that it was so. One could not expect people to brave such weather for the sake of viewing a handful of sketches like these. Besides, there were so many other things going on, he told himself patiently. Perhaps he had been injudicious in accepting the club's invitation to use the gallery at this gayest of gay seasons. What with the theatres, now at the height of their short Easter carnival, the endless balls and dinners and coaching trips, the score of great weddings—surely it was no wonder that his slender offering had gone overlooked. People had been very generous as it was, he went on determinedly. Three out of the fifty pictures had sold; not at an overwhelming price, it is true; but the fact of their selling at all proved that they made their appeal. It was rather odd, though, that Winters, his old college mate, who had bought two of the three, should not have been able to come in for a look at the paintings since his one glimpse on the first morning. He had hurried in on his way down-town, glanced through the right-hand alcove, a group of Cape Cod water-colors, seized upon the two nearest with the brief command, "Mind you don't dare sell 'em over again!" and plunged away. His check had followed a day later. It was not a small check; Prescott thought, vaguely, that it would cover the summer in Maine for Selina and himself, haps a little to spare. It was a Winters was always so rushed-t to take any real pleasure in life. fortune was surely a magnificent g; bu if its mighty bulk thrust itself be:ween life and all the worthier things of life-books, music, art—art, above all-of whɔ ́ avail? He paced slowly about the wid hadowy room, his long wrinkled delicate hands clasped behind him, his gray head bent. The gallery had never looked quite so well, he said to himself, with a gratification that held, for some inexplicable reason, a barb of doubt. It was a stately old room always, its dull hues of carven wood, of faded velvet, of dim warm tarnished gold, made an inimitable frame for the frail vanishing frost-work of his art. To-day it owned the added grace of flowers; for Mrs. Winters had sent him a carriage-load from her home green-houses that morning. Narcissus, swaying ghost-white on their tender stalks; lilies of the valley, the very breath of girlhood; and in a dusk corner a great opalescent bowl of tulips, flame-red, the lovely fires of spring. Against the tapestry of this atmosphere his pictures shone out, little stars. There was the Cape Cod group, a sheaf of airy fancies; a tawny sweep of autumn marsh, beneath a sky all fiercely blue; a gray fog dawn, soft and chill, lifting, falling, as a cerecloth blown; sunset from a lonely pier, a wide sky barred and dappled with flakes of gold, one white moth wing of a sail adrift on a golden sea. Across in the opposite alcove hung the studies he had made in the Riviera, that one unforgettable year of his joy; a walled garden, overgrown with ancient vines, rustred; a noble terrace, sloping to the sea; a fountain, antique, despoiled, its forsaken nymph lifting white pleading arms against the ilex gloom. And between, grouped with cunning judgment on the dim velvet wall, were ranked some twoscore canvases which he held full "Yes. It closes at six," he answered, aware that she did not know him for the artist, and dimly irritated that this was so. "This is your first look at them?" he added, by way of rounding out his sentence. "My one chance," she replied, with a gracious little smile. She turned away, drawing a notebook from her furred sleeve, and began making rapid entries. A shade of disappointment crossed Prescott's face as he looked after her. A reporter, then; at best, an art critic, here because her assignment demanded it. Yet she had looked interested. A party of three, a woman and two men, came through the broad arch and circled the gallery rapidly from group to group, talking in undertones. PresIcott sat down in a dusk corner of the alcove, behind a screen of palms, and rested his head on his hands. It came to him suddenly that the tension of the past week had been great, and that he was very tired. So tired that when the three crossed over and stood di Wait appliton (laik rectly in front of his palm-screen it did not occur to him to make himself known. "How old did you say he was, Ned?" The woman leaned forward, straining her handsome near-sighted eyes to see the bit of lonely sunset, Prescott's treasure of treas ures. "Really, Ella, I don't know. Rising sixty-oh, sixty-five, anyway," answered the elder of the two. He was florid, heavily built; his deep voice struck a kindly, mellowed note. "He was teaching Latin at Andover when I was a soph there; he can't be more than eight or ten years older than I am, though. Teach? On my word, that fellow was a wonder, a miracle! He could shake up every dry bone in Rome, and hang flesh and blood and togas on them while you waited. He could make Cæsar enchantment; he could make prose exercises a joy-think of it, Latin prose! They say the great artist is born once in a generation; but the great teacher comes once in a century, and he was the man. Think of it! And then-this!" "What a pity!" sighed the woman, peering down at her list. "Whatever made him take it up?" queried the second man. "The Lord knows," said the other, easily. "He always was a poetical chap; wild over. anything that pretended to be scenery. He was forever taking us off on sketching tours, and he spent every minute of his vacations down at the art school, they said. He drew rather well then; quite as well as he does now-better, maybe. I had a little scrap of a hillside he sketched for me hung in my study for years, but it disappeared one moving-time, and never turned up. It was quite up to the level of anything here." "What a pity!" sighed the woman once more. She put out her hands with a curious gesture, as if she thrust aside some wearying, irremediable regret. "What a wicked waste, I should say!" said the younger man. "I've heard that before about his teaching. And they say that his moral hold on his boys was quite as wonderful." "Wonderful is just the word for it," said the other. "His being a good teacher was the least part. But as a man-on my word he was one of "these Thy saints." He was a white flame. It's been forty years since I've seen him, but I don't believe I could face him now if I had a smutty thing on my hands. He was a world-leader, I tell you --or might have been. And to think it has come to this!" "They aren't bad at all," the kind, inexorable voice went on. "But there's nothing in them. He's done his sincere monotonous best; but he had neither genius nor experience to back him. I don't know anything of his life now, but I'm willing to wager he's the same big guileless child who used to stand up and cheer us on to victory against the Helvetii and the Averni and all the rest of the unpronounceable heathen. His message is a child's message. He's never seen temptation, let alone conquered it. What sort of a lift can he give us poor devils who are down in the ruck all our days?" "Don't," said his wife slowly. "They're beautiful, anyway. The coloring in that sunset is exquisite." "So is the coloring in your hat trimming," retorted her husband, with a shrug. "Come on, both of you. We'll be late to dinner now, as it is. Your fur? You left it downstairs, dear. Careful of that rug! I can't see why they can't keep the place better lighted." "It's time to close the gallery, sir. I'm sorry to disturb you All right, Marcus." Prescott got to his feet unsteadily. The gallery was certainly very cold. His narrow old shoulders trembled; his hands were so numb that he could scarcely shut them. "If you can wait a few minutes longer, I'll take some of them down and carry them home," he said to the servant. He turned and began unfastening the clamp which supported the sunset view. The man assisted him in deferential silence. It was not until the walls were stripped and the heavy portfolio packed to bursting that he spoke again. "Thank you, Marcus. No, I do not want a cab. I think I'd rather walk." "What about the flowers, sir?" "The flowers?" Prescott repeated absently. "What flowers? Mrs. Winters? Oh, send them to-to the hospital, please. That will be best. Good-night." He groped down the shallow stone staircase and out into the wet, dark street. The wind had fallen, but a pelting sleet stung his face and chilled him to the bone. He crossed the blaze of the avenue blindly; he was walking toward his home by witless "They aren't so bad," yawned the other. instinct, for the one impulse that moved him was the pitiful animal craving to escape, to hide himself away with his crushed soul. Fourth Avenue was thronged with a hurrying crowd, homeward bound. As he started to cross a policeman caught his shoulder and jerked him sharply up on the curb. Down the avenue came the wild siren scream of the fire-engine, the clang of thundering wheels. The crowd fell back to the sidewalk. A woman's voice cried out sharply, then was still. The engine wheels had caught in the car-track: the great machine swerved sidewise, then crashed over, throwing horses and men into one struggling heap. There was a groan of horrified pity, a quick surge of the crowd to see. Prescott dragged himself free of the mob, and stumbled back to the nearest doorway, dizzy and sick. A woman stood there, steadying herself against the iron grating; the electric light flared full in her face. A half-smile of recognition flickered on her white lips as she looked up; Prescott knew her in a moment for the young reporter at his exhibit. He lifted his hat. |