Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 November 1898 — Gordon's Garden at Khartoum. [ARTICLE]

Gordon's Garden at Khartoum.

Gordon lias become a legend with his countrymen, and they all hut deify him dead who would never have heard of him had he lived. But in this gurcl'u you somehow came to know Gordon the man, not the myth, and to feel near to him. Here was an Englishman doing his duty, aloue. and at the Instant peril of his life; yet still he loved Ills garden. TU> garden was a yet more pathetic ruin than the palace. The palace accepted Its doom mutely; the garden strove against it. I T ntrimmed, imwatered, the oranges and citrons still struggl'd to hear their little hard green knobs, as if they had been full ripe fruit. The pomegranates put out their Vermillion star-flowers, hut tbe fruit was small and woody and juiceless. Tli' figs bore better, but they, too, were small and without vigor. Itaukly overgrown with dhurra, a vine still trained over a low roof its dwarfed leaves and limp tendrils, but yielded not a sign of grapes. It was all green, nnd so far vlvd and refreshing after Oindurman. But It was tin* green of nature, not of cultivation; leaves grew large and fruit grew small, and dwindled away. Reluctantly, despairingly, Gordon's garden was dropping back to wilderness. And in the middle of the defeated fruit tree* grew rankl.v the hateful Hondan apple, Mi,' poisonous herald of desolnl ion.- London Mail. ’