Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/81

 for the veil of the temple, as have offered them less than they asked. They sat, smoked, and cast indifferent glances at us while baskets of gorgeous raiment were borne in, and affected to look up the prices in a book of records. After baiting me long enough, and bringing me to raise my offer, the trio of partners would suddenly clap their hands, say something in concert, and deliver me the article. It was all as precisely ordered and acted as a set scene on the stage, and I longed in vain to assist at other acts in the unique drama.

all its foreign sophistications, flower worship has not died out in the Japanese capital. The calendar is divided into the time of the camellia, the plum, the cherry, the wistaria, the lotus, the chrysanthemum, and the maple. Orange blossoms and tea blossoms alone are omitted among the special flower festivals, and the Japanese as naturally refer to the time of the cherry blooming or of maple-leaves, as we to spring or autumn. They infuse into these festivals a sentiment and feeling, a spirit and gayety, inherited from generations of flower-loving ancestors, who made their æsthetic pilgrimages year after year to see the acres of wonderful flowers in the different suburbs of each city. By the old calendar, the first unfolding of the plum-trees, the true awakening of the seasons, marked the new year. In the change from the Chinese method of reckoning to the Gregorian, the Japanese January fell to a churlish mood of nature, when only late chrysanthemums, camellias, and in-door dwarf -trees can bloom. But every door-way is then 65