eamy
white against their feet, and a clump of willows trail their palest
green shoots in front of all. The sun sends for an ambassador through
the azalea bushes a lordly swallow-tailed butterfly, and his squire
very like the flitting 'chalk-blue' of the English downs. The warmth of
the East, that goes through, not over, the lazy body, is added to the
light of the East--the splendid lavish light that clears but does not
bewilder the eye. Then the new leaves of the spring wink like fat
emeralds and the loaded branches of cherry-bloom grow transparent and
glow as a hand glows held up against flame. Little, warm sighs come up
from the moist, warm earth, and the fallen petals stir on the ground,
turn over, and go to sleep again. Outside, beyond the foliage, where the
sunlight lies on the slate-coloured roofs, the ridged rice-fields beyond
the roofs, and the hills beyond the rice-fields, is all Japan--only all
Japan; and this that they call the old French Legation is the Garden of
Eden that most naturally dropped down here after the Fall. For some
small hint of the beauties to be shown later there is the roof of a
temple, ridged and fluted with dark tiles, flung out casually beyond the
corner of the bluff on which the garden stands. Any other curve of the
eaves would not have consorted with the sweep of the pine branches;
therefore, this curve was made, and being made, was perfect. The
congregation of the globe-trotters are in the hotel, scuffling for
guides, in order that they may be shown the sights of Japan, which is
all one sight. They must go to Tokio, they must go to Nikko; they must
surely see all that is to be seen and then write home to their barbarian
families that they are getting used to the sight of bare, brown legs.
Before this day is ended, they will all, thank goodness, have splitting
headaches and burnt-out eyes. It is better to lie still and hear the
grass grow--to soak in the heat and the smell and the sounds and the
sights that come unasked.

Our garden overhangs the harbour, and by pushing aside one branch we
look down upon a heavy-sterned fishing-boat, the straw-gold mats of the
deck-house pushed back to show the perfect order and propriety of the
housekeeping that is going forward. The father-fisher, sitting
frog-fashion, is poking at a tiny box full of charcoal, and the light,
white ash is blown back into the face of a largish Japanese doll, price
two shillings and threepence in Bayswater. The doll wak