As to "fooling with running water," the mere trickle here in question
had to be dragged out of its cradle to make it run at all. It remained
for me to find out by experience that even that weakling, imprisoned and
grown to a pool, though of only three hundred square feet in surface,
when aided and abetted by New England frosts and exposed on a southern
slope to winter noonday suns, could give its amateur captor as much
trouble--proportionately--as any Hebrew babe drawn from the bulrushes of
the Nile is said to have given his.
Now if there is any value in recording these experiences it can be only
in the art principles they reveal. To me in the present small instance
the principle illustrated was that of the true profile line for ascent
or descent in a garden. You may go into any American town where there
is any inequality of ground and in half an hour find a hundred or two
private lawns graded--from the house to each boundary line--on a single
falling curve, or, in plain English, a hump. The best reason why this
curve is not artistic, not pleasing, but stupid, is that it is not
natural and gains nothing by being unnatural. All gardening is a certain
conquest of Nature, and even when "formal" should interfere with her own
manner and custom as slightly as is required by the necessities of the
case--the needs of that particular spot's human use and joy.
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