exhibited were, according to our ideas,
atrocious in colouring, but many were beautiful and all were marvels
of cultivation. Even greater manipulative and horticultural skill was
represented in the chrysanthemums I saw at the Imperial garden party.
A chief of a department of the Ministry of Agriculture told me that
from a chrysanthemum growing in the ground it was possible to have a
thousand blooms.

In a Japanese room the timber upright alongside the _tokonoma_ is
always a tree trunk in the rough. If it be cherry it has its bark on.
The contrast with the finely finished wood of the rest of the room is
arresting. It is said that the use of the unplaned upright is not more
than three or four hundred years old and that it had its origin in
_Cha-no-yu_ affectations of simplicity.

I was visited one evening by an agricultural official who had returned
from a visit to Great Britain. He spoke of the "lonelyism" of our best
hotels. In a Japanese hotel of the same class one's room is so simple
and the view of the garden is so refreshing that, with the beautiful
flower arrangement indoors, the frequent change of _kakemono_, the
serving of one's meals in a different set of lacquer and porcelain
each day and the willing and smiling service always within the call of
a hand clap, there comes a sense of restfulness and peace. The
drawback which the Western man experiences is the lack of any means of
resting his back but by lying down and the inability to read for long
while resting an elbow on an arm rest which is too low for him.[218] A
Japanese often reads kneeling before a table.

Here I am reminded to say that the development of the desire for books
and newspapers in the rural districts is a noticeable thing, if only
because it is new. It is not so long ago that reading was considered
to be an occupation for old men and women and for children. The
samurai had few books and the farmers fewer still. But the idea of
combining cultivation and culture was not unknown. I have heard a
rural student humbly quote the old saying, _Sei-ko U-doku_
(literally, "Fine weather--farming--Rainy weather--reading").

I have a rural note of one of my visits to the _No_.[219] One farce
brought on an inferior priest of a sect which is now extinct but
surely deserves to be remembered for its encouragement of mountain
climbing. This "mountain climber," as he was called, was hungry and
climbed a farmer's tree in order to steal persimmons. (The actor g