could be crowded into tumblers or horrible coloured glass vases.
The change back to Japanese methods was all done by kindness. I began by thanking the nésan for the fresh flowers, and went on by asking her to take away all but those of one colour, to delight some one else who had not had so much magnificence thrust upon her. Then I took a hand myself, and my table-mates with me, and we brought in wild flowers—a few, with some graceful grasses; and I unearthed a Japanese basket with a bamboo water-holder inside, as a vase. Then the O Kami San began to take an interest, and brought us flowers in a tall well-shaped Japanese jar; and finally the lordly proprietor himself took to seeing that our table boasted a charming arrangement, simple and beautiful, which was changed nearly every day. And so it was at every hotel we went to. If the Japanese servants see that the foreigner takes an interest—more, that he appreciates their methods, and prefers them to what they fondly fancy are his own, they will spare no trouble to place real masterpieces of composition before him. On the other hand, in out-of-the-way places, where the chance foreigner may happen to be an overbearing, half-educated, and wholly crass clerklet from a Treaty Port, who despises, in Japan, a daintiness, a fastidiousness of detail that he would not be likely ever to have seen in the haunts of his own class in
