or sent it awry—­exaggeration.  The house itself, mere expression, of course, of a narrow, limited mind, was sheer ugliness; it required no further explanation.  With the grounds and garden, so far as shape and general plan were concerned, this was also true; but that trees and flowers and other natural details should share the same deficiency perplexed my logical soul, and even dismayed it.  I stood and stared, then moved about, and stood and stared again.  Everywhere was this mockery of a sinister, unfinished aspect.  I sought in vain to recover my normal point of view.  My mind had found this goblin garden and wandered to and fro in it, unable to escape.

The change was in myself, of course, and so trivial were the details which illustrated it, that they sound absurd, thus mentioned one by one.  For me, they proved it, is all I can affirm.  The goblin touch lay plainly everywhere:  in the forms of the trees, planted at neat intervals along the lawns; in this twisted ash that rustled just behind me; in the shadow of the gloomy wellingtonias, whose sweeping skirts obscured the grass; but especially, I noticed, in the tops and crests of them.  For here, the delicate, graceful curves of last year’s growth seemed to shrink back into themselves.  None of them pointed upwards.  Their life had failed and turned aside just when it should have become triumphant.  The character of a tree reveals itself chiefly at the extremities, and it was precisely here that they all drooped and achieved this hint of goblin distortion—­in the growth, that is, of the last few years.  What ought to have been fairy, joyful, natural, was instead uncomely to the verge of the grotesque.  Spontaneous expression was arrested.  My mind perceived a goblin garden, and was caught in it.  The place grimaced at me.

With the flowers it was similar, though far more difficult to detect in detail for description.  I saw the smaller vegetable growth as impish, half-malicious.  Even the terraces sloped ill, as though their ends had sagged since they had been so lavishly constructed; their varying angles gave a queerly bewildering aspect to their sequence that was unpleasant to the eye.  One might wander among their deceptive lengths and get lost —­lost among open terraces!—­with the house quite close at hand.  Unhomely seemed the entire garden, unable to give repose, restlessness in it everywhere, almost strife, and discord certainly.

Moreover, the garden grew into the house, the house into the garden, and in both was this idea of resistance to the natural—­the spirit that says No to joy.  All over it I was aware of the effort to achieve another end, the struggle to burst forth and escape into free, spontaneous expression that should be happy and natural, yet the effort forever frustrated by the weight of this dark shadow that rendered it abortive.  Life crawled aside into a channel that was a cul-de-sac, then turned horribly upon itself.  Instead of blossom and fruit, there were weeds.  This approach of life I was conscious of—­then dismal failure.  There was no fulfillment.  Nothing happened.