_July 10th._ As I lay on the porch this afternoon, facing the great mountain to the north, the long fingers of the westering light touched the foamy white tops of the chestnut trees, still crowned with their mist of bloom. The light slid across the hollows of the mountain-side, filling the long curves with dark green shadows, a soft, deep background for the maples of the nearer lawns, all golden green in the full sunlight, and for the silver of the wind-ruffled poplars. Locust trees are on every side, a survival of the native forests. Where the light is reflected from their leaves, they are a dark bluish green; but where the sun strikes through them, each leaflet is shining gold, and the long leaves sway at the end of every branch like giant fronds gleaming under some Midas touch. But even the locusts are far away, across the many-acred lawn. The trees near the house are too young and small to shelter birds; and if I go out to the locusts their foliage is too light and too high to shade my eyes from the glare: so I have been missing the birds. If I could stay with the others it wouldn’t matter; but I must lie alone, and in silence, resting between lines when I write; and Grumpy is boring company. So I’ve been casting envious looks at a place across the road. A long hedge of blossoming privet hides everything but the tree-tops, but there are dozens of them; and wings flash in and out. It is a large place, larger than this; I know there’s a corner in it there I wouldn’t be in the way. The sense of something near and unknown, yet knowable, draws me daily. The Garden of Delight I call it, and listen for the songs which float from it, and long for its shade and sunshine. When the Madam came to sit with me I confessed my daft condition to her, and she went across the road to the Garden’s owners—two ladies who are friends of hers—and returned presently with the freedom of the Garden for me and my chair. I am to go tomorrow. I wonder sometimes if people dream of the pleasure they can give through little things. To these ladies I suppose their bit of hospitality is a trifle soon forgotten; but to me it is pure delight. It will hearten me for my fight a thousand times, and lift me clear above the pain a thousand more. It is hard to keep steady when one is so happy. The long, filmy curves of wind-swept silver in the evening sky grow suddenly dim; and when they wheel me back to bed I am “fair lifted,” as the Scotch say, and wait joyfully in the darkness for such sleep as night may bring. * * * * *