Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 6.djvu/122

 refinements of virtuous womanhood, all the accomplishments of expert training, and all the attractions of vague morality. She is a Japanese invention and a Japanese specialty.

In autumn the chrysanthemum becomes the centre of attraction. The Japanese were once able to claim the premiership of the world as cnltivatorscultivators [sic] of this flower, but their pride of place has been usurped by Western horticulturists. Still the chrysanthemum, their imperial flower, the Emperor's crest, and the nucleus of hundreds of exquisite decorative designs, is far more to them than to any European people. They delight in its quaintly named varieties,—the "jewel of the inner court," the "autumn amulet," the "ten-fingered, ten-eyed flower," the "snow of the pear-bloom," the "sleep of the hoary tiger," the "moon-touched blossom," the "crystal palace," the "five-lake hoar-frost," the "three-treasure petal," and so on; they delight in the wonder of the blossom's dishevelled symmetry, so characteristic of the equipoise and irregularity of their own decorative art; they delight in the wealth of bloom that careful nursing can produce,—as much as from thirteen hundred to sixteen hundred flowers on a single plant,—and they delight in the ingenuity of public gardeners who mould masses of blossoms and greenery into historical and mythological tableaux, which even the country bumpkin and the city gamin are not too ignorant to appreciate. It appears that a