Page:Japanese Gardens (Taylor).djvu/201

by itself. There was a tiny pond with goldfish and flashing carp; a neatly cobbled beach, like the shores of a mountain lake, made firm ground on which the visitor could walk to the very brink, and there, from a convenient (and dry) rock, watch the play of those winged things of the water. On another bank, some Irises and Reeds ‘broke’ the clear edges of the lake, and lengthened themselves in cool green reflections. There was a well, with a quaint old well-sweep and bucket, and a moss-’broidered stone lantern crouching beneath a little Peach tree. A kind of pergola, already brave with Wistaria tendrils,—but until that should attain a fuller growth, delicately draped with Virginia Creeper,—led one with loitering feet to the Japanese quarters again. South and West this garden lay, and all day long the sun hung over it, and the flowers (for there were pots and pots of them of all sorts there) made liquid purple pools of shadows on the warm earth. At night the moon came there and picked out all the white blossoms for its own, and laid a long silver torch upon the pool, and called out new scents and fragrances from leaf and flower that even the sun had not evoked. My windows looked on this, and the Lady from California was led to demand more than once what I was owling out of the window again for,—if I had ever seen the flowers of her native state I should not be able to look at these poor makeshift blooms