Chapter 3 - Page 2

had
explained to us aboard-ship that they came to Japan in haste, advised by
their guide-books to do so, lest the land should be suddenly civilised
between steamer-sailing and steamer-sailing. When they touched land they
ran away to the curio shops to buy things which are prepared for
them--mauve and magenta and blue-vitriol things. By this time they have
a 'Murray' under one arm and an electric-blue eagle with a copperas beak
and a yellow '_E pluribus unum_' embroidered on apple-green silk, under
the other.

We, being wise, sit in a garden that is not ours, but belongs to a
gentleman in slate-coloured silk, who, solely for the sake of the
picture, condescends to work as a gardener, in which employ he is
sweeping delicately a welt of fallen cherry blossoms from under an
azalea aching to burst into bloom. Steep stone steps, of the colour that
nature ripens through long winters, lead up to this garden by way of
clumps of bamboo grass. You see the Smell was right when it talked of
meeting old friends. Half-a-dozen blue-black pines are standing akimbo
against a real sky--not a fog-blur nor a cloud-bank, nor a gray
dish-clout wrapped round the sun--but a blue sky. A cherry tree on a
slope below them throws up a wave of blossom that breaks all creamy
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