The
rose-beds are no more, the paths that were woven into long stripes
across its grass-plats are overgrown and hardly traceable. Only one
lichen-covered, weather-stained seat circling about an old locust-tree
remains, and this is on its last legs and needs propping up--or did the
last time I saw it. The trees are still there. These old stand-bys reach
up their arms so high, and their trunks are so big and straight and
smooth, that nothing can despoil them. They will stay there until the
end--that is, until some merciless Commissioner runs the line of a city
street through their roots. Then their fine old bodies will be drawn and
quartered, and their sturdy arms and lesser branches go to feed the
fires of some near-by factory.
No ladies of high degree now sip their tea beneath their shade, with
liveried servants about the slender-legged tables, as they did in the
old days. There are tables, of course--a dozen in all, perhaps, some in
white cloths and some in bare tops, bare of everything except the glass
of beer--it depends very largely on what one orders, and who orders
it--but the servants are missing unless you count Muffles and his
stable-boy.
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