g2 East and West 
ality. While the Japanese character may not 
have so much that is worthy of emulation, 
there is one trait which commends itself in 
this connection—it is the love of their coun- 
try, their estate, that is, their wild garden 
itself; the love which draws a whole people 
into the fields to see the plum, the cherry, 
the iris, the lotus, in blossom. As a people 
they. cherish their ancestral garden, enter- 
taining a national feeling and appreciation 
for its finer effects, its more spiritual signifi- 
cance as manifested in beauty. Here is an 
exquisite and refined perception which makes 
its possessors the masters of their estate in a 
sense that less highly endowed people can 
never be, and yields them the most evanescent 
and charming influences. Consider this— 
aye, and consider the dogwood! 
Around the edges of the clearings and the 
fields and orchards—fields which belong to 
the bobolinks, orchards, the estate of the 
house wren,—there appears at the appointed 
time, as by some beautiful magic, the lovely 
vision of the dogwood, a charm, a personality, 
not like any other. It is a vision to contem- 
plate with such gentle reverence for beauty 
itself as the wise Japanese show for their 
cherry blossom; a vision to call one forth into 
