To one side of the mansion there is a formal garden that hugs up close
to the ivy-covered walls of the house. It is such a garden as one sees
in elaborately illustrated copies of Mother Goose "with silver bells and
cockle shells." It's so beautiful that it doesn't seem real. California
gardens are like that, and to those of us from bleak countries they look
like pictures out of books. There is this well-groomed garden of the
living present hugging up close to the ruins of yesterday and then, if
you please, Mother Nature, with her penchant for whimsy, has grown right
up against these two a riot of purple and gold lupine, a product of her
own unaided husbandry.
I am not much on allegory nor sermonizing, but I declare San Francisco
gets me started. And when walking along about one's business, one sees
such a vivid picture, the allegory forces itself. The grandeur of
yesterday, the serious beauty of today, and then the wild flowers that
covered the hills before man interfered and will live on after man has
gone into dust to make new flowers.
Such a contemplation would make some people blue but it gives me a
feeling of something basic and secure and eternal in all this strange
puzzle of life. It was a beautiful day up there on the tip-toe of Nob
Hill. What a beautiful view they must have had from the mansion windows.
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