470 SENTIMENTALISM 



idea was this : " I have always thought,'' he remarked, 

 when he was rather unwillingly got on his legs after the 

 Loving Cup had passed around, " as Daniel Avas sitting in 

 the lions' den, looking dubiously at his glaring, heavy- 

 maned hosts, and wondering when the performance was 

 going to begin, that one of his chief causes for self-gratu- 

 lation must have been the agreeable fact that in all hu- 

 man probability he would not be called upon for an 

 after-dinner speech." 



The Jap is a sentimentalist of the first water — in a wa}^ 

 we Anglo-Saxons do not understand. He fairly worships 

 his cherry blossoms ; the first two weeks in April are a 

 constant fete for the entire population ; and prince and 

 peasant, side by side, will write scraps of poetry on scraps 

 of paper and tie them, each to a twig of his favorite tree. 

 Adjoining my country-place at home is the Weld Farm, 

 renowned for its champagne cider. There is no more 

 superb sight in Japan than the two hundred acres of 

 apple-trees on "Weld Farm in full bloom; but what 

 Yankee ever tied a piece of poetry to an apple-tree? His 

 character, his education, his tendencies, all lead him to 

 prefer the cider. The Japs are quite crazy over flowers. 

 If a man were proven before a Japanese jury to have 

 committed murder in the first degree, and was also 

 shown to be peculiarly devoted to cherry blossoms or 

 chrysanthemums, I doubt if any twelve men could find it 

 in their hearts to bring in a verdict of guilty. But halt ! 

 so far as our subject goes, 



"The flowers that bloom in the spring, Tra-la. 

 Have nothini? to do with the case." 



