MY SHRUBS a5 
Callicarpa longifolia is a deciduous shrub from Japan, with 
flowers in violet spikes and violet berries to follow. My infant 
plant grows well, but has not yet blossomed. ‘The other varieties 
are tender, save the rare C. giraldiana. 
Calophaca wolgarica, from Siberia, is hearty, and hangs out its 
rather dull yellow, pea-flowered blooms among dwarf conifers— 
various species of pinus and thuya, fir and retinosphora—which 
make it welcome enough. Here, too, are yews in miniature, 
and certain junipers, of which Juniperus hibernica nana, like a 
big blue shaving-brush, can cheer my most dejected hour. To 
speak generally of these tiny trees, which have thrust themselves 
into this chapter, I admit that natural dwarfs cannot vie with the 
esthetic, artificial miniatures of Japan—those wonderful living 
pictures painted by generations of faithful artists ; those tortured 
things hanging to life by their eyelids, and suggesting, in the com- 
pass of a porcelain tray or bowl, the whole battle of a tree against 
lightning and tempest and time. These solemn atoms rightly 
awake far deeper emotions than my fat and prosperous dwarfs ; but 
the ideal of a northern Vandal like myself is prosperity, peace, and 
plenty in my garden patch ; and, while I admire the more subtle 
and sublime conceptions of the Japanese—earthy wretch that I 
am—there is no desire in me to emulate their emaciated master- 
pieces. I respect their ideals and applaud their ambition; I 
cheer the genius who can give you a whole country-side—its 
contours and complexities, plains and forests, and cloud-capped 
hills, within the ambit of a tea-tray ; but such good things are not 
for me; such flights leave my bucolic spirit bewildered and 
fainting. I will not heave up a mountain in a flower-pot and 
set a blasted maple upon its dizzy crags; I will not make an 
D 
