Page:Japanese Gardens (Taylor).djvu/200

130 Pines, set in calmly without any fuss, as if a Pine, after attaining a certain size, were not one of the hardest things in the world to transplant! Sir Francis Piggott tells me that in Tokio the shrubs and trees in the garden of a rented house, if set in by the tenant, belong to him, and he may and does remove them when he changes to another abode. One can easily believe this statement when one has seen these small, busy people take up a good-sized tree and replant it. It never seems to occur to them that it may not grow. The transplanted one accepts the changed conditions without shedding a leaf. So these Pines and Maples, Plum trees and Cherry trees, Camellias and Azaleas, like happy brides in new homes, settled down cheerfully in this garden of love.

The water (which was humbly piped in bamboo) trickled down over the mossy stones as if it had been born to that rocky bed; and under the thatched roof of the ‘Scene-viewing Place’ on the crest of the hill (with one’s back to the house), the satisfied visitor could gaze away, over Maples and Birches and the clustering roofs of the fishing village, to the ever-changing, changeless sea, content—content.

On the other side of the house was a more conventional garden,—or at least it was laid out according to the classic rules of Japanese art, and was more like the usual places one sees in that country,—if to Western eyes it seemed a spot