CHAPTER VI
GARDEN FENCES AND HEDGES
“Over the garden fence my Plum tree blooms,
Inviting in the weary passers-by;
I may not close the gates now, if I would:
The world may love my flowers as well as I.”
This poem is not only a pleasant fancy, but a literal fact in Japan, where the owner of a garden which boasts a flowering tree does not selfishly shut it out with a high fence and well-locked gates, limiting the joy of his possession to himself and his intimates. No, he has the fence, and one high enough for privacy, although not too high for air and light, and he has the gates; but when the bloom is on the bough the passer-by may enter and enjoy and worship, just as he might, in a Roman Catholic country, enter a church, pray, and pass on again. Nor do these people take an unfair advantage of the privilege, for I firmly believe that, if there were tramps and rogues in Japan (which there are not), they would be dowered with a moral as well as an æsthetic sense, and that not even the most hardened of them would steal so much as a flower.
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