Page:Japanese Gardens (Taylor).djvu/115

Rh the Lilium auratum and Tiger Lilies, and in the autumn delicately displaying the tiny carmine stars of the Maple leaves that nestled near it, yet only once did I see its little candle box alight, and that was for the Feast of Souls, in August.

But they have a reason for being, and so the most is made of them. What the sundial was to old English and Colonial American gardens, that the stone lantern is to its Japanese prototype. Can it be transplanted? Well, I have one in Hong-Kong which pretends to light the path leading up to the house. Because of the intolerable burning of our winter suns, the drying, searing qualities of our winter winds, and the monstrous ravages of our summer typhoons, no watering can restore the moss with which it was adorned in the little garden at Shimonoseki, whence it was torn. It has no delicate Plum or Cherry branches to caress it; no protecting Pine tree (as yet) to lean over and shield it; no ‘Recumbent Stone’ beside its austere straightness, to bring to it lines of beauty; in fact, it is quite out of its picture. And yet every man and woman, white or brown or yellow, who goes near it stops to examine and to admire it. And so, if it is still a pleasant thing to see here, where climate, tropical sun, scenery are all against it, what will it not be when it goes into a quiet nook in an English garden, where skies are soft and wet, as in Japan, and where its old friends, the Japanese