[Illustration: PLAN OF THE ELEVEN SYMBOLIC TREES WHICH THE FARMER PLANTED
OUTSIDE HIS HOUSE AND THE EVILS (REPRESENTED BY ARROWS)
FROM WHICH THEY ARE SHIELDING HIM]

The virtues inscribed on this plan are the guardians of the farmer and
his family, which is represented in the middle of it. The words behind
the arrows represent the character of the attacks to which the farmer
conceives himself and his family to be exposed. Courage is imagined as
going before and Wisdom as protecting the rear.

The talk turned to some advice which had been given to farmers to lay
out "economic gardens." They were to plant no trees but fruit trees.
To this an old farmer of our company replied: "If you are too
economical your children will become mercenary. Some families were too
economical and cut down beautiful trees, planting instead economical
ones. Those families I have seen come to an evil end. The man who
exercises rigid economy may be a good man, but his children can know
little of his real motives and must be wrongly influenced by his
conduct." We all agreed that there was nowadays too much talk about
money-making in rural Japan. "Even I," laughed the owner of the
symbolic trees, "planted not persimmons but pines."

FOOTNOTES:

[14] That is, before the Revolution of half a century ago, when the
Tokugawa Shogun resigned his powers to the Emperor.

[15] The Japanese bed, _futon_, consists of a soft mattress of cotton
wool, two or three inches thick. It is spread on the floor, which
itself consists of mats of almost the same thickness, 6 ft. long by 3