Page:Japanese Gardens (Taylor).djvu/27

Rh eternal industry, gentleness to children and to birds and to all timid wild things—I think that one of the loveliest is their love of beauty, their insistence on it as one of the primary needs of life, and their belief in it as a moral and spiritual uplifter.

I remember a poor little dwarf, whose tiny house on the shores of Lake Hakone stood in front of, but did not conceal, such a scrap of a garden for the worship of Nature. How she had cursed him one knew, not only from his physical affliction, but by his wretched little half-witted child, a cretin, whose dull, hopeless eyes were so often seen at the cracks of the shoji. But no, he was not even half-witted, this poor little creature, for he could not move about as other young animals can, nor make an intelligible sound. Nevertheless, his father, who might have been working all day in the hotel garden—the poor back, with its short legs, pitifully near the ground he was weeding—would, with his snatches of song, attract the child’s attention before he reached his home, and would hold up the flowers he had brought for him, causing even those poor dull eyes to brighten a little. Never was that minute plot of earth less than well cared for; the little Azalea bushes were clipped, the stepping-stones were bright, the poor little shrine in a niche was tidy and well tended; and yet, handicapped by Nature, ugly and revolting to look at, poor, of a poverty we cannot guess, this