Beside the library, there was the old garden, which he himself has quaintly described. “There were old lilac bushes at the right of the entrance, and in the corner at the left that remarkable moral pear tree which gave me one of my first lessons in life. Its fruit never ripened, but always rotted at the core just before it began to grow mellow. It was a vulgar specimen at best, and was set there no doubt to preach its annual sermon. But in the northern border was a high-bred Saint Michael pear tree, which taught a lesson that all of gentle blood might take to heart; for its fruit used to get hard and dark, and break into unseemly cracks, so that when the lord of the harvest came for it, it was like those rich men’s sons we see too often, who have never ripened, but only rusted, hardened, and shrunken. We had peaches, lovely nectarines, and sweet white grapes, growing and coming to kindly maturity in those days. “As for the garden beds, they were cared for by the Jonathan or Ephraim of the household, sometimes assisted by one Rube, a little old Scotch gardener, with a stippled face and a lively temper. Nothing but old-fashioned flowers in them—hyacinths pushing their green beaks through as soon as the snow was gone, or earlier; tulips, coming up in the shapes of cornucopiæ; peonies, butting their blunt way through the loosened earth; lilies, roses—damask, white, blush, cinnamon; larkspurs, lupines, and gorgeous hollyhocks. “The yellow-birds used to be very fond of some sunflowers that grew close to the pear tree with a moral. I remember their flitting about, golden in the golden light, over the golden flowers, as if they were flakes of curdled sunshine.” Oliver had a younger brother John, who was as light of heart and full of fun as he; and gay times they had together in this quiet old town, and this old house with its books and its garden. He says that as a boy he was afraid of the tall masts of ships that used to come up the river, and he would hide his eyes from them. And he was afraid, too, of a great wooden hand, the sign of a glove-maker whose shop he sometimes passed. So in happiness and comfort he dreamed his early years away, with his brothers and sisters and father and mother. He was like a fine, luscious pear in that old garden, ripening without rotting at the core, or yet getting hard and full of cracks. CHAPTER V SCHOOL LIFE