civilisation stops exactly as it does in another land a few thousand
miles further West. The globe-trotting, millionaires anxious to spend
money, with a hose on whatever caught their libertine fancies, had
explained to us aboard-ship that they came to Japan in haste, advised by
their guide-books to do so, lest the land should be suddenly civilised
between steamer-sailing and steamer-sailing. When they touched land they
ran away to the curio shops to buy things which are prepared for
them--mauve and magenta and blue-vitriol things. By this time they have
a 'Murray' under one arm and an electric-blue eagle with a copperas beak
and a yellow '_E pluribus unum_' embroidered on apple-green silk, under
the other.

We, being wise, sit in a garden that is not ours, but belongs to a
gentleman in slate-coloured silk, who, solely for the sake of the
picture, condescends to work as a gardener, in which employ he is
sweeping delicately a welt of fallen cherry blossoms from under an
azalea aching to burst into bloom. Steep stone steps, of the colour that
nature ripens through long winters, lead up to this garden by way of
clumps of bamboo grass. You see the Smell was right when it talked of
meeting old friends. Half-a-dozen blue-black pines are standing akimbo
against a real sky--not a fog-blur nor a cloud-bank, nor a gray
dish-clout wrapped round the sun--but a blue sky. A cherry tree on a
slope below them throws up a wave of blossom that breaks all creamy
white against their feet, and a clump of willows trail their palest
green shoots in front of all. The sun sends for an ambassador through
the azalea bushes a lordly swallow-tailed butterfly, and his squire
very like the flitting 'chalk-blue' of the English downs. The warmth of
the East, that goes through, not over, the lazy body, is added to the
light of the East--the splendid lavish light that clears but does not
bewilder the eye. Then the new leaves of the spring wink like fat