In a Convent Garden

...October 9, I929 THE COMMONWEAL 587 repeal it cannot secure has but two alternatives, supine submission or nullification...

...I have often read of hermits raising little patches of corn and beans, and I think it would be a delightful way to do...

...But ordering seeds is only one predominating passion...

...After all, as an extra-legal procedure, nullification is not without serious consequences for the political integrity of the group...

...It is indicative of political courage, but such courage is worthy of a better cause...

...Listen: there is, down deep A constant light I keep Within my heart...

...An equal share of blame attaches to the majority which, in the face of the sincere and persistent opposition of a formidable minority, refuses to consider a reasonable modification of the law in question...

...Its power Will blanch your darkest hour...

...I discovered my plight just in time to answer the bell for Rosary, Angelus and supper...

...I recopy the mutilated list, and take it up to Reverend Mother...

...She nursed them with a mother's care, in between music pupils, and delighted to see new fronds reach out their green fingers from day to day...

...But what a meditation--surely each one of these blue glories is singing "Praise God !" There are tragedies in my garden, too...

...DeatA Dread 0 gaunt and pale death dread, Who chill the path ahead, I bear a glowing charm Against your fearful harm...

...My day has little need To fear what worms may feed After your icy breath Has frozen mine in death...

...Cost, $x6.82...

...And drag in the mud it did, all afternoon, I potting and digging and transplanting the while...

...My certain star of love, All luminous above Your phosphorous decay, Will lead to perfect day...

...A topknotted bird cocks his bright eye at me and says "Cheer up...

...I led Towser to the scene and spanked him soundly with a little stick, since which time, whenever I come near, he casts an apprehensive brown eye on me and looks thoughtful...

...My scabiouse bud is an infinitesimal hit larger, fatter and more like an old maid's pincushion than it was yesterday...

...Holy Church teaches that it is a grievous wrong wilfully to disbelieve statements contained in Holy Writ, and never had I any impulse to think them otherwise than Gospel truth...

...Which reminds me of another story...

...But, my dear child, she says--where will you ever put fifty kinds of flowers...

...How can one have more than one predominating passion...

...Nullification of bad law breeds the habit of disrespect for all law, and disrespect for all law presages the end of political organization for the preservation of which we make law...

...I shall continue to inquire hopefully, however, until I find a good hermit who knows violets from cockleburs, and I shall install him in our rabbit shed, or our hollow tree, or anywhere his eremitical heart desires...

...They begin with seed catalogues...

...That is a severe necessity, and Reverend Mother, seeing my great need, nods and smiles indulgently on my follies and indiscretions...

...I must keep them securely covered with wire netting, and woe is me if I forget and leave it off an hour or two...

...IN A CONVENT GARDEN By A MARYKNOLL SISTER ESIDES converting heathen and studying two languages and taking care of rabbits, I am the gardener for our house...

...Thither Are My Sorrows The sparrows are again flying with the north wind, While summer is done with its wasteful laughter-And the silver sound of my youth's offering, I hear it glide along unto the vale of the unknown...

...But the rascal knows about Saint Francis, and so he is bold and impenitent, and he winks at me, and says "Cheer up...

...But some innate quality in my simplicity leads me to accept likewise descriptions in seed catalogues, and I swallow them all whole, blissfully and trustfully...

...I frown at him severdy...

...One half-holiday, it being rainy, I set to work blissfully, having first girded up habit skirts and fortified myself with a pair of large substantial rubbers and two aprons...

...I say nothing--no, not one word do I say...

...So I go over my lists and cross out the things I feel that I can live without...

...If Ryder's holds forth on the beauty of a new blue cineraria, what can I do but gape and sigh, and mark it down on my list ? If Burpee's elaborates on a blood-red zinnia with twisted petals--I must have it, that is all...

...Thus my list grows, and grows, and grows...

...I had put my trust in a deceitful safety pin which presently betrayed me and let a yard-length of white scapular down to drag in the mud...

...Though following your steps, I lift joy to my lips: And when in snow you cower, My fancy springs to flower...

...Thenceforth my care was to keep behind a pillar or in a shadowy corner with the disreputable scapular, until after supper came time for a change and a trip to the laundry...

...I wish (think I)--I wish that I could get up an hour earlier and make a meditation out here...

...Translated by Alice Bidwell Hlesenber9 [rom the Spanish of CONCHA ESPINA...

...And I shall allow him to dig in my garden during the long hours when I must he converting the heathen...

...And my garden space is about the size of the front porch where my mother used to sit and gossip over her crocheting...

...Anehusa--h'm, let me see---well, I can do without the small one, but I must have the big Dropmore one...

...A hermit would be a great acquisition in our garden--like a sundial, and a bird-bath, he would fit in and harmonize with the surroundings...

...He eats my pet parsley plants--right down to the roots he eats them...

...Let our lawmakers beware lest they legislate our fair land to destruction...

...I planted them in a shady spot, mellow and soft with leaf mold and humus...

...Having no time to gather up the fragments then, she went in to chapel, and the subject she chose for her meditation was, "An enemy hath done this I" Sometimes good folk, knowing my mental aberratlons, bring me plants and cuttings, upon which I thank them from my heart, and ask God to thank them from His heart (which is something more like) and hasten off to stick them into mud...

...There was the time Towser planted a bone in the place where I had just planted a well-rooted hydrangea cutting, and when I discovered the crime, neither hydrangea nor root could be found, but the bone was there, quite safe...

...He pulled them up for weeds the next day, while I was in my classroom converting the heathen...

...Will the commission of experts save the country from an impasse greater than any since that which led to the Civil War, by a report declaring unenforceable all law opposed as this legislation is...

...answer we all, and I am off...

...And, oh, look at the Japanese morning-glory vine--a blue flame--a blaze of azure glory...

...Our native man-of-all-work had never seen violets, and besides, he is not overly blessed with brains...

...If it were not for Saint Francis, I would--yes, I would--feed him poison pills or something...

...All during breakfast, while the venerable rule of Saint Augustine is being read aloud, I am nursing the profane intention of slipping out immediately--oh, sooner than immediately, if possible--to see what progress that scabiouse bud has made during the night...

...The present temper of both proponents and opponents of the existing prohibition laws being what it is, there is no hope of a modification acceptable to both...

...A kind English lady who also is afflicted with gardenitis gave me some cuttings of sweet English violets--"the long-stemmed kind," she said...

...I have asked in all seriousness, only to be greeted with cheap witticisms from those who think I am joking...

...At last it is reduced by about half...

...And shuddering over the wiggly worms as I do so, and smelling the brown earth fresh and grateful to God for the cool and spreading sweetness of rain ? And knowing that every tiny plant will stand sturdily on its feet and thrive lustily, having got its start in life under such circumstances ? Then, there is the watching for the first blossom on a new variety...

...I shall never dare to show such a list to Reverend Mother...

...But since there are grave obstacles in the way of my ever becoming a hermit, I have often wondered why we could not import one...

...Boil down that list to a dozen or so, and then send it...

...I raised two tiny, delicate ferns, and put them into two dainty china pots, and gave them to the music room Sister, who had a handy table for them...

...To enforce this legislation in the face of the demonstrated numerical and qualitative opposition is not an act of statesmanship and patriotism, but of narrow politics and zealotry...

...This is purely hypocritical, as I am a famous sleepy-head...

...Gardening and hermiting seem to go together, somehow...

...But you, O pale death dread, Vanish in endless shade While I, a child of light, Walk, fearless of your might...

...Why should I fear you, blind, Who never knew to find Joy in each day and night, Peace under shade, or light Demon of frost, you know Not the eternal glow Of incense on my hearthYou parasite of earth...

...Cool and sweet it is, with a hint of a wind from the sea, and the low morning sun stretching the trees' shadows out to immense lengths...

...Then, in an excess of cruelty, I go over the list again, dosing my eyes, and ruthlessly drawing my pencil through this one and that one and yet another one...

...Where russet /eaves are blown never to return ; Where sighs of the golden poplars are held Breathless and alone-Thither, entwined with the mystic weave of night, Have my sorrows flown...

...Reduced at last, to fifty items...

...One showery night she put them out on the veranda for their health's sake, and in the morning before meditation time, she opened the door and saw what was left of them lying where the two playful puppy dogs had distributed them--a root here, a bit of green there, pot over there, and earth everywhere...

...Of course, nullificaton as a welbestablished Anglo-American institution has an excellent pedigree...

...If not, conscientious parents must view with grave apprehension the future of the country in which their children and children's children are expected to find their earthly happiness...

...How about transplanting tender little things in a fine mist of rain...

...Nor will the responsibility for its eventual degradation rest entirely or even primarily upon those who refuse to obey objectionable law...

...At last, scanning the closely written sheets of paper, I count the items, and find that I have just 253 kinds of flowers marked down, to say nothing of vegetables...

...M. DE GRACIA CONCEPCION...

...I shall die without it...

...And guiltily conscious in my heart of hearts that I scarcely have room for a dozen in my tiny plot, I reduce it to fifteen (including the colored Aretotis...

...Are hermits so rare nowadays...

...Aretotis--I have seed of the white ones from my own plants last year, but here is a new kind--all colors, with black centre--at a terribly stiff price1 But Aretotis does so well in our garden, and looks so well on the altar--and a colored one, with black centre l So it goes down the list, heartbreakingiy...

...A nation habitually flouting the obligations of its formal law, or enforcing objectionable law upon an unwilling minority without regard for sensibilities and consequences, will slowly but surely descend to that point of disintegration where it will cease to be a political unit fit to maintain itself against its more self-respecting neighbors...

...One could garden indefinitely without at all disturbing one's state of being a hermit, and then, too, one could be an extremely eremitical hermit without ever having to stop gardening...

...She will never know till the great day that my original list numbered 253...

...I have ordered blue flowers by the dozen, only to have them turn out a deadly purple or a sickly lavender...

...For this, my beacon spark, Will burn throughout the dark Of time, its constant flame Starring the sky's wide frame...

...Tu autem Domine miserere nostri," says the Sister Reader, THE COMMONWEAL October 9, I9Z9 ,i and "Deo gratias...

...I don't know, and most likely theology is dead against me, but I am sure I have a number of them...

...Now, every gardener must have a garden...