Yet it is _not_ so simple as it looks. In such a project everything depends, it will be admitted, upon the garden; it must be a tolerably familiar, at least a conceivable spot. The garden of Paradise, for instance, who would choose it as a _point de repaire_ from which to observe the breed of Adam at the beginning of the twentieth century? One would be interrupted everywhere by the necessity of describing the flora and fauna; it would be like writing a botany book with interpolations which would necessarily seem profane; and the whole thing would be rejected in the end because it was not a scientific treatise upon the origin of apples. Certainly, if one might select one’s plot, the first consideration should be the geographical, and I am depressed to think that my garden is only less remote than Eve’s. It is not an English garden--ah, the thought!--nor a French one where they count the seeds and the windfalls, nor an Italian one sunning down past its statues to the blue Adriatic, nor even a garden in the neighbourhood of Poughkeepsie where they grow pumpkins. Elizabeth in her German garden was three thousand miles nearer to everybody than my cane chair is at this moment. How can I possibly expect people to come three thousand miles just to sit and talk under my pencil-cedar? So “long” an invitation requires such confidence, such assurance! Who indeed should care to hear about every day as it goes on under a conifer in a garden, when that garden--let me keep it back no longer--is a mere patch on a mountain top of the Himalayas? Not even India down below there, grilling in the sun which is not quite warm enough here--that would be easy with snakes and palm-trees and mangoes and chutneys all growing round, ready and familiar; but Simla, what is Simla? An artificial little community which has climbed eight thousand feet out of the world to be cool. Who ever leaves Charing Cross for Simla? Who among the world’s multitudes ever casts an eye across the Rajputana deserts to Simla? Does Thomas Cook know where Simla is? No; Simla is a geographical expression, to be verified upon the map and never to be thought of again, and a garden in Simla is a vague and formless fancy, a possibility, no more. Yet people have to live there, I have to live there; and certainly for the next few months I have to make the best of it from the outside. If you ask yourself what you really think of a garden you will find that you consider it a charming place to go out into. So much I gladly admit if you add the retreat and background of the house. The house is such an individual; such a friend! Even in Simla the house offers corners where may lurk the imagination, nails on which to hang a rag of fancy; but in this windy patch under the sky surrounded by Himalayas, one Himalaya behind another indefinitely, who could find two ideas to rub together?