water expressing the garden’s mood, as they reflect the colour and changes of the sky; the well, dark and shadowed, sombre though pure, remains the constant and unfailing spring of life, the soul of the garden. When that fails the flowers wither and fade, the leaves and mosses dry and shrivel, the trees, even, droop and die. The garden’s spirit is gone!
I like the idea, more especially in that land of unfailing springs, for there it has not the sadness, the tragedy even, that the sentiment might suggest in places where the wells are not of eternal life, but even of a briefer space than man’s. One might remark—but luckily it has nothing to do with gardens—that some of their wells, whose water comes from but little below the surface, where it is contaminated by the drainings from house and yard, and is trustingly used for drinking, are veritable wells of death, not life! This is one of the reasons why tea, the national beverage of the country, is so much safer to drink than the favourite tipple of my own land—‘ice-water.’ (It is not ‘iced,’ but ice-water in name as in reality. Lumps of ice fill the tumbler and a little water is put with them. ‘Iced’ water means water cooled in bottles on ice.)
The Japanese have many legends and superstitions of poisoned and of haunted wells. But even where no story is told of goblins, they have always a respect for the spirits which frequent
