e dreamy pond overhung by trees, or the
distant glimpse of a mountain peak framed in picture-wise between the
nearer hills; or, at their appropriate seasons, the blossoming of
the many tree flowers, which in eastern Asia are beautiful beyond
description. For he appreciates not only places, but times. One spot is
to be seen at sunrise, another by moonlight; one to be visited in the
spring-time, another in the fall. But wherever or whenever it be, a
tea-house, placed to command the best view of the sight, stands ready to
receive him. For nature's beauties are too well recognized to remain
the exclusive property of the first chance lover. People flock to view
nature as we do to see a play, and privacy is as impossible as it is
unsought. Indeed, the aversion to publicity is simply a result of the
sense of self, and therefore necessarily not a feature of so
impersonal a civilization. Aesthetic guidebooks are written for
the nature-enamoured, descriptive of these views which the Japanese
translator quaintly calls "Sceneries," and which visitors come not only
from near but from far to gaze upon. In front of the tea-house proper
are rows of summer pavilions, in one of which the party make themselves
at home, while gentle little tea-house girls toddle forth to serve them
the invariable preliminary tea and confections. Each man then produces
from up his sleeve, or from out his girdle, paper, ink, and brush, and
proceeds to compose a poem on the beauty of the spot and the feelings
it calls up, which he subsequently reads to his admiring companions.
Hot sake is next served, which is to them what beer is to a German or
absinthe to a blouse; and there they sit, sip, and poetize, passing
their couplets, as they do their cups, in honor to one another. At
last, after drinking in an hour or two of scenery and sake combined, the
symposium of poets breaks up.

Sometimes, instead of a company of friends, a man will take his family,
wife, babies, and all, on such an outing, but the details of his holiday
are much the same as before. For the scenery is still the centre of
attraction, and in the attendant creature comforts Far Eastern etiquette
permits an equal enjoyment to man, woman, and child.

This love of nature is quite irrespective of social condition. All
classes feel its force, and freely indulge the feeling. Poor as well as
rich, low as well as high, contrive to gratify their poetic instincts
for natural scenery. As for flowers, esp