The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-01-14

1 thing of beauty the sons and daughters of Nippon have no superiorS on earth ] The Japanese garden, the heart of tht l Japanese home, is not vulgarly display ! ed in front of the house, but carefully ! concealed in the rear. To the Japanese
 mind, the ostentatious disepla yof these home beauties in front of the house is | looked upon in much the same way as l the American looks upon the display of diamonds at the race track, or upon a 1 family which would hang it's silverware out on the front porch for exhibition to
 the passers-by.
 | The Japanese home-makers make
 their gardens their beauty spots, in the back yard The arrangement of Jap anese home is the reverse of ours. The l front of the house is the kitchen, sort of a back porch where the shoes are left in exchange for slippers. Slippers are always provided for visitors, and no
 greater insult can be given the Nippon housewife than to enter her home with shoes. In the more pretentious homes,
 the garden itself is surrounded by high
 walls; in the others bamboo screens or
 screens of cunningly woven rushes hide
 the view from the outside. It is only when the shoji, the sliding paper parti-
 tions of the house, are telescoped on q
 hot day to admit the breeze, that the
 passer-by can get a peep into the glor-
 ies of the Japanese back yard
 Personal acquaintance with several
 Japanese officials enabled me to inspect
 many of the domestic holy places of this
 Asatic fairy land only few months
 ago. These garden range in size any
 where from 10 acres to space of 10
 square inches, for, if there is absolutely
 no outdoor space, nimble fingers carve
 a toko-nwa, about the size of a soup
 tureen. The toko-niwa is merely a mod el of a garden, carved with elaborate care, showing walks, rocks, hills, minia- ture bridges, trees and streams. Bam-
 boo vases in the form of boats adorn
 the home. and an imitation of well bucket, wrought in lacquer finish. swings from bully by silken rope in the corner of the room. But this is not resorted to if alb it of garden can be squeezed in between the houses CT in any other available nook
 In cases out of 10, the Japanese gar den has few or no flowers, being wholly landscape effect, In some, scarcely green leaf is to be seen: it is all pebbles and stones and sand. At Togo-ike in Tattori-ken, there is an elaborate gar den made wholly of stones and sand, so designed as to afford the illusion of ap- preaching the sea. At the Abbot's pal ace in Toku- -wamonji there is a famous garden of this kind, in honor of the his toric 'Nodding Stones" These are the rocks which bowed in submission before the monk Diata who preached the gos- pei of Buddha in the early days Every famous public garden must have stones of wondrous powers, just as every seaside resort must have a sea serpent There is the "Women's Stone" in the temple of Hachiman, the Sessho-aski, the death stone of Nasu; the "wealth-giving stone" by the caverns of Enoshima From the KoJlkl, the Japanese New Testament we are told of the Emperor O-Jin, who drank more than he ought and 'smote with his august staff a great stone in the middle of the ohosaka road, whereupon the stone ran away. These rocks frequently bear deograph writing. and we are told in lne of these archaic texts of the de- mons of Idzumo who made rocks, and 'oots of trees and leaves, and the foam 'f the green waters to speak"
 The stones of gardens are seldom de- E 'aced in their shape by hammer or 'hisel. Quaint, grotesque shaped rocks, n their natural form, are sought 10 construct the hooks. the grotesuue bridges and the uncanny caverns of the