Adams, Adeline: The spirit of American sculpture (New York: Nat. Sculpture Soc., 1923)

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THE SPIRIT OF
churches, and dear to the careful gar-
dener, replenishing from it the green-
painted, fine-snouted watering-pot kept
sacred to his tiny seedlings. Then
there is the water-spout, ready with its
witty word of grotesque, and the rain-
water pipe-head, in which English lead-
work of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries displayed a vigorous and in-
teresting art. There is even the bird-
bath, that modern invention of the
nature-lover, since today, though we
profit by many of the garden ideas of
the Renaissance, we do not imitate
those Siennese gallants who tied
blinded thrushes to the dwarf ilex and
cypress, to decoy winged creatures for
convenient garden shooting. The
twentieth-century bird-bath lures birds
to life rather than to death, as is shown
in a decorative bronze by Annette
Saint-Gaudens, who has represented
upon it characters in Percy MacKaye’s
bird-masque, Sanctuary. The mas-
VIII
OF GARDEN SCULPTURE