laughter it evoked, when I essayed the task. But the broom and I never reached the gate together!
Some big entrances have a little wicket gate beside them, for convenience, but these would be only in the great places, where a porter’s lodge and big double doors would imply the need of a more modest entrée for foot-visitors. In these fine gateways all the elaboration of carved wood, splendid roofs, and, perhaps, lacquered decorations of eaves, would be found; in others the timbers might be left rough, the roof thatched, or the latter be itself but a cross piece of wood, planed and capped with metal, or rough hewn, with upturned curves like a torii, or with bark and moss upon it as it was brought from the forest. Sometimes it might be only a trellis, with a lovely creeper depending from it as a decoration. Where an open fence of bamboo, with twining Roses or Wistaria, is used, this would be the appropriate sort of gate to combine with it.
Light gates of bamboo, or trellis gates, are often used to lead from one part of a garden to another, and so are those picturesque ones, previously spoken of, with thatched or shingled roofs, made of mellow, silvery old wood. The latter suggest—but for the wooden tablet suspended in the middle, which gives the name of the garden, or recites, in native characters, some poetic sentiment which describes it—the
