John Gayther’s Garden and the Stories Told Therein

An old estate’s garden is the setting Frank R. Stockton gives to these eleven tales, and his opening line sets the frame: the garden did not belong to John Gayther, he merely had charge of it. Gayther is the gardener, an elderly man who had been a sailor, a soldier, a miner, a ranchman, and a good many other things besides. Visitors drift in among the box hedges and grape arbors, settle down, and take turns telling stories: the Daughter of the House, the Master and Mistress, a Frenchman, the Next Neighbor, an old professor, and Pomona and Jonas from Stockton’s Rudder Grange books. Gayther opens with a treasure yarn from his sea days and has the last word too. Scribner’s published the book in November 1902, months after Stockton died.