CHAPTER XIII
SOME PARTICULAR GARDENS
“ ’Tis not my garden by real ownership,
Nor yet because my genius made its Art,
But, cherished by my love and tenderness,
That place is mine which lives within my heart.”
By the ownership of affection I am mistress of many gardens in Japan, and that kind of possession is ten points of the law. They are of varied sorts, these gardens of mine, and scattered over several provinces, and in the years I do not go to Japan in the flesh I visit them in the spirit, and enter my annual declaration of rights in them. They are not all magnificent show-places and great parks, such as, with the illimitable wealth of fancy, others might exclusively choose. Some are humble little plots of ground, the tiny back yards of flimsy wooden houses, whose torn paper windows (“the work of little fingers on the shoji”) open upon them. They are abloom only with gaily-clad children,—whose little noses invariably need wiping,—unless a wild flower or two adorns the miniature shrine, or a few Irises
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