are bundles of reeds that suggest torches, and fences which have made many a public school boy think of other days; and again more of the same material, but evenly fastened, as if they formed a thin hedge of bare twigs, that are called ‘Nightingale’ fences.
These last were, to me, more poetic in sentiment than in appearance, for they reminded me of the fences of the poor negroes in the swamps of Arkansas; and although I remember how the mocking-birds sang there when I was a child, I recollect, still more clearly, the savagely barking, half-starved dogs that used to dash out from behind them, and the gibbering old ‘witch woman’ who would scream at us over the fence of switches. But the Japanese are gentler than those untamed Africans who had been brought to die of ague in our Southern swamps, and their birds are more serene and happy beings too. The nightingale—the bird-lover of the Plum—may serenade his mistress from these bare twigs, happily fancying his song will evoke her flowers. The poet says—
“My fence of twigs is desolate with snow,
And yet the loving nightingale is there.
He takes the snowflakes for his lady’s flowers,
And pours his soul out in his love and woe.”
These twig fences are built also in two and three tiers, but even the higher ones are only
