e very much like
our own, with a dash of warmth and more sunshine than we can boast, a
climate where anything grows and flourishes and an atmosphere clear as
crystal; instead of enjoying it and expanding to the delightful
circumstances surrounding them, they set to work to make themselves
uncomfortable in what seemed to me such an irritating and futile way.
That any sane people should eat a succession of horrible concoctions
made up of raw fish, lotus roots, bamboo shoots, and sweets that tasted
of Pears' soap, whisked into a lather, with a little sugar added as an
afterthought, eaten Japanese fashion, was worse than the judgment passed
on Nebuchadnezzar, and with the beasts of the field Nebuchadnezzar, at
least, had no appearances to keep up, whereas we had to respond to a
courtesy that was agonising in the exquisiteness of its delicacy.

The very dainty manner in which it was all served, in small porcelain
dishes, on lacquer trays, with little paper napkins, the size of postage
stamps tied with gold cord, seemed to emphasise the utter inadequacy of
the food. The use of chop-sticks, too, was not one of the least of our
trials, especially as we were told that if we broke one of the spilikins
it was an omen of death.

I really must say that I sympathised with the youth of modern Japan when
I heard that most of them sit on chairs at their meals and now use
knives and forks like ordinary people. Mrs. Koizumi, indeed, told us a
story of one of Hearn's Tokyo pupils, who, on making a call on the
professor, found him seated orthodox Japanese fashion with his feet
under him. The visitor, accepting the cushion and pipe offered him,
could not refuse to follow suit. Soon, however, he found his position
intolerable. Hearn smiled. "All the new young men of Japan are growing
into the western style," he said, "I do not blame you, please stretch
your legs and be comfortable."

After dinner we returned again to the study. A wintry sunlight fell
athwart the garden, a regular Japanese garden; to the left was a
bamboo-grove, the lanceolated leaves whispering in the winds. On the
right, at the foot of two or three steps that led to a higher bank, was
a stone lantern such as you see in temple grounds. On the top of the
bank a cryptomeria threw a dark shadow, and a plum-tree near it was a
mass of snowy white bloom.

But what arrested our attention was a small flower-bed close to the
cedarn pillars of the verandah. It was bordered with eve