tea—for this is the usual garden seat for tea-houses. Over these the porch roof sometimes extends, as in the picture of the tea-house in Mamyama Park, Kyoto, shown facing page 92, or a creeper-clad trellis may protect it from the sun.
A Japanese garden bridge is, to my unmathematical mind, the most delightful sort possible (although the delight is full of the spice of variety), because it is seldom the shortest route between the two sides of a stream, and it never even pretends that it has been erected to save time. A garden, more especially a garden in Japan, is a place to loiter in; the bridges, the little islands of the lake, the summer-houses on the shore, the seats in the shade, the very stepping-stones, which do not help one’s feet to hasten, are all means to that end. You do not come into the garden to make money; you do not come to exercise, and to hurl balls about; you do not pass through it to save time, but to spend it, and to spend it laughingly, contentedly, tranquilly, taking in through all your senses its pleasant suggestion of repose and peace. The goldfish will do the darting about, and we can get our feeling of life and movement in watching them. Or we may follow the flight of the bird we have startled from the Cherry tree, and study the struttings and preenings of the two sparrows that so boldly hop and peck beside the water-basin,
