garden owners is that the designer, like the house architect, should claim only a certain percentage upon the cost of the undertaking, some "jobs" make but poor return. For a small garden may take so much fussing that it ought to pay its designer and superintendent as much as the original outlay for digging and planting. Yet if any rash woman should attempt to charge for her services at that rate, quite terrible would be the result. Another point should be remembered in considering landscape gardening as a money-making profession. You recall Bacon's words, "And a man shall ever see, that when ages grow to civility and elegancy, men come to build stately sooner than to garden finely." Conversely, when men come to hard times, and something must be lopped off, the fine garden is the first thing to go. In lean years such as this there is a general curtailment of gardening projects even on great estates, for gardening is still regarded as a pure luxury. If the pecuniary rewards are not sure to be rich, are there intangible compensations? Nothing dazzling, certainly, in the shape of fame. A National reputation is ground for solid satisfaction, but it brings with it none of the excitement of popular applause. For no landscape architect, unless he be prominently connected with large public works, becomes anything of a hero to the man in the street, landscape architecture not being as yet exactly a popular art. And then the results of one's labors are so painfully susceptible to change! It is almost like hanging a painting by the roadside, with brushes handy, and a palette full of colors, so that any passing child might daub away at it at will. You cannot copyright a landscape effect, nor otherwise protect it. Your client may take a fancy to tinker it a bit himself, or he may sell his estate, and his successor, by a few weeks of injudicious planting, may blot out the picture wrought through careful years. Not for one instant will all this daunt the woman to whom landscape design is a master passion. To her, hardships and responsibilities are but so many spurs. She exults in the demands upon every power of mind and body. In other words, she is an artist, and, in so far as her art is concerned, a willful fanatic. To such as she it is not necessary to say that the game is worth the candle, be the candle never so dear. She will go into the work, in any case, let who will say her nay. But the woman who is not sure of herself, of her health, of her gift, of her stick-to-it-iveness, had better lay to heart the terse advice of Mr. Lowell: "Don't go into it unless you simply can't keep out !" AN ITALIAN FUNERAL BY JAMES OPPENHEIM Humbly, O humbly, in slow procession, the hearse and horses, the drivers and mourners Trail between tenements hung with dark faces and eddying crowds at the gray street-corners. Clouds hold the skies in, the gutter is muddy, workmen are ripping the street for a sewer, And lo, to a drum-throb musicians are leading the dead, the dead to a Church of the poor. A drum-throb! Hark, like a sob of a mother heart-reft at midnight, music is soaring, Cry from the deeps of the heart of the human, cry that breaks weird through the world's wild roaring Blasts of the Law that strikes without pity, wails of the Love that is bowed to the Law, Voice of all mortals blessing God's giving, God's taking: hearking, I shiver with awe! And lo, to that music yon swarthy Italians between them are sawing a pine beam in half, The dead-march rhythm runs through their labor; they swing, they sweat, they grumble and laugh; Hurrying men greet each other and jostle on alive : errands of business: all are But the dead trails through the red storm of the living, and the mourners are dumb in the loud man-hive. Now at the Church a shrunk shawled woman, weird with saint's e es and prayer-given lips, Swings back the door, and lights the six candles, and bends to the Christ whose breast-gash drips; In comes the coffin borne by stout drivers, and twenty poor humans pour shadowy after, Dark, dirty, bowed with a Pain more than mourning; yon woman sheds it in ghastly laughter. O Poor, mean-begotten, rag-pickers, fruit-peddlers, refuse and riffraff washed up a foul street, Stowed in a cellar under tons of great peoples, torn by the trample of millions of feet, O Poor, have ye too the dead in your rooms? Have you brought him forth for the world to see? Six candles light him; a priest and a chanter sing-song old Latin to set the soul free. Jesus looks down and Mary beholdeth, incense arises: the dead is dead! Women, women weep under head-shawls, bleed, torn hearts, uncomforted! Dead, he is dead, that was dead since birth, that never awoke to the music and dream, A dumb forked beast that bred and fed mouths and was drowned at last in the mud of the stream. He is gone one mouth less now to be filled; but, oh, one toiler less he is gone! A month shall ye nearly starve for the burial: ye must pay, pay dearly for leave to mourn. And why do ye do it? Is there love among shadows, in cellars; have ye dreamt of eternal life? Were ye led, after all, by the flaming Vision, O son, O brother, O mother, O wife? Lives a God in your world-your world where the sands forever sink down through the trusted sieves? I see ye stare at the Christ on the wall: my heart is torn as by hands-God lives! Ye see his face, ye behold his sweetness; he gropes to you through a plaster cast: And lo, to me he gropes through your faces, he gropes, he touches, he thrills at last! Vagabond Glimpses of Two Old Provinces By Harold and Madeline Howland Illustrated with drawings by Third Baper N the afternoon of our second day at Amboise we drove under a gray sky through a flat gray stretch of country to the famous château of Chenonceaux. The approach to the château is down a long avenue shaded by stately limes. Several groups of country-folk in Sunday finery gave life and color to the scene. Their costumes were not unusual in design, but they were gay and neat, and the women all wore lovely hand-made caps freshly starched and ironed. The château is charmingly situated on the river Cher-quite literally on the river, for a part of the building, supported by stone arches, spans the stream and meets the farther shore with a drawbridge. It During several reigns Chenonceaux was the favorite pleasure place of the court. Here they held great fêtes, here they hunted, idled, quarreled, and intrigued. During its ownership by Diane de Poitiers the château knew its period of greatest brilliance and gayety. was she who built the long gallery across the Cher and laid out the beautiful gardens. Catherine de Médicis' first act upon the death of Henry II was to depose Diane, the favorite, her hated rival, and herself take possession of the happy halls and sunny woods of Chenon ceaux. Its history under her dominion is perhaps no more evil, but certainly more somber, than under Diane's sway. Then it had been the home of festivals and love-intrigues, now it became the center of political plottings. The rooms of the château which are shown, though beautiful, are not particularly significant. They have been much restored, and show traces of their modern occupancy, though the whole effect is mellow and harmonious. Seen under different auspices, our admiration would perhaps have been more aroused. But we were so unfortunate as to be escorted by an obnoxious female, whose face, voice, and manner vied with each other in exasperating us. We turned our attention from her supercilious proffers of information to the peasants who were our fellow-visitors. The women drew together in a little knot, fingering the old tapestries and embroideries, while the men examined with interest the curious weapons on the walls, exchanging murmured comments on their inutility. At the gate M'dame stopped for a word with the little old white-capped lodge-keeper about her garden, and won from her a gay bunch of pansies. Turning to enter the carriage, she found M'sieur in the clutches of a most persuasive old dame, who was trying to convince him that his visit to the château would be incomplete if he did not buy a box of the Chenonceaux specialty. He succumbed to her insinuating pleadings and bought at an exorbitant price what proved to be barley-sugar sticks of a singularly atrocious flavor. We drove back to Amboise in the rain, and spent another night at the inn whose official title is the "Cheval Blanc"-but which remains for us "At the Sign of the Little Fluffy Cat." Our last day with Gray Brother was a short one in miles, but we lengthened it out by lazy paddling, a long nooning, and a visit to the little town of Rochecorbon. The rain had not entirely forgotten us. It came down in little showers from occasional bunches of black cloud that went hurrying before the west wind across a fleecy white background pierced with blue. During an interval of sunshine we landed on a shaded point which had a tiny harbor with a sandy beach between protecting tree roots for Gray Brother. Bread and cheese and strawberries were quickly disposed of, for we were always hungry in that glorious air. M'sieur betook himself to his pipe, while M'dame curled up at the foot of a tree and promptly slept. The murmur of the breeze in the poplars, the sweet fragrance of the locust blooms, the subdued green and gold light sifting through the canopy of leaves above, and the springy softness of the turf wooed all the senses at once, and the pipe soon dropped unnoticed. When we awoke we indulged in a little target practice with the pistol which M'sieur had insisted on buying in Paris, and set sail again. Below Amboise the banks of the river had changed, rising into cliffs a little distance back from the shore. The people of the little towns we passed lived for the most part in caves hollowed out of the cliffs. Rochecorbon was one of these villages of cave-dwellers. It had a single street, perhaps a quarter of a mile long, a mere turnout from the main road, which followed the river's course. On the river side of the street were a few real houses set in the usual walled gardens. On the other side the peasants lived in layers, their homes occupying the face of the rocky wall almost to the top. They looked as though the fronts of the ordinary plaster cottages of the country had been sliced off, a yard or |