"And yet, d'you know," added the boy from home, a little wistfully, looking down into the green, secluded peace of the walled-in garden, "there _must_ be something kind o' nice about the quiet of it, being able to do as you please without everybody looking at you. It sort of makes our front yards seem like a public park, instead of a home, doesn't it?" "Yes," I said sadly, "it does, a little." Oh, Europe, Europe! seductive old Europe, ever up to thine old game of corrupting the fresh candor of invading barbarians! "But, anyhow," ended the boy from home bravely, "I don't care. I think our way is lots the nicest ... for _everybody_!" Dear boy from home! Then we went downstairs and visited our modest establishment, typical in a small way of all those about us, and although made up of the same essential features as those of a small American town home, differing in a thousand ways. "Why, there are apples on this hedge, real apples!" said the American. "Who ever heard of apples on a little low hedge plant?" "Those aren't hedge plants," we told him. "Those are real apple-trees, trained to grow low, cut back year after year, pruned, watched, nipped, fertilized, shaped, into something quite different from what they meant to be. They produce a tenth, a twentieth part of what would grow if the tree were left to itself, but what golden apples of Hesperides they are! The pears are like that, too. Here is a pear-tree older than I, and not so tall, which bears perhaps a dozen pears, but _what_ pears! And you see, too, when the trees are kept small, you can have ever so many more in the same space. They don't shade your vegetables, either. See those beans growing up right to the base of the trees."