perfect form.

Lightly and daintily as the shadows of the tremulous leaves of the
bamboo-grove and the summer light that touches the grey stone lanterns,
and the lotus flowers on the pond, so does his genius flit from subject
to subject, conjuring up and idealising ancient tradition and
superstitions. The whole of his work seems transfused with mystic light.

We can hear him talking with Kinjuro, the venerable gardener; we can
catch the song of the caged _Uguisu_, an inmate of the establishment,
presented to him by one of the sweetest ladies in Japan, the daughter of
the Governor of Izumo.

The _Uguisu_, or Japanese nightingale, is supposed to repeat over and
over again the sacred name of the Sutras, "Ho-ke-kyo," or Buddhist
confession of faith. First the warble; then a pause of about five
seconds, then a slow, sweet, solemn utterance of the holy name.

They planted, his wife tells us, some morning glories in summer. He
watched them with the greatest delight, until they bloomed, and then was
equally wretched when he saw them withering.

One early winter morning he noticed one tiny bloom, in spite of the
sharp frost; he was delighted and surprised, and exclaimed in Japanese,
"Utsukushii yuki, anata, nanbo shojik" (What a lovely courage, what a
serious intention).

When, the next morning, the old gardener picked it, Hearn was in
despair. "That old man may be good and innocent, but he was brutal to my
flower," he said. He was depressed all day after this incident.

He had already, he declared, become a little too fond of his
dwelling-place; each day after returning from his college duties and
exchanging his teacher's uniform for the infinitely more comfortable
Japanese robe, he found more than compensation for the weariness of five
class-hours in the simple pleasure of squatting on the shady verandah
overlooking the gardens. The antique garden walls, high mossed below
their ruined coping of tiles, seemed to shut out even the murmur of the
city's life. There were no sounds but the voices of birds, the shrilling
of _semi_, or, at intervals, the solitary splash of a diving frog, and
those walls secluded him from much more than city streets; outside them
hummed the changed Japan telegraphs, and newspapers, and steam-ships.
Within dwelt the all-reposing peace of nature, and the dreams of the
sixteenth century; there was a charm of quaintness in the very air, a
faint sense of something viewless and sweet; perhaps the gent