HOUSE AND GARDEN 
160 
September, 1911 
The late Frederick Remington and 
Homer Davenport on the terrace 
The trout pools spill over into the stream that 
turns a picturesque wheel 
the famous Har¬ 
vey collection. 
cover thecouches 
and mark out 
spaces on the dull Indian red of the floor. Your eye may chance 
to discover other artistry of the red men (and red women) in 
two or three mellow-lined baskets near the rafters. A very giant 
of a moose’s head, crowned by a superb pair of antlers, once 
laid low by the host’s rifle, looms against the timbers of the far 
wall, and peers in the twilight as once you might have seen it in 
the far northern woods. 
Add a few rifles and trout rods to the walls, a few souvenirs of 
travel, and you begin to have something of the simple surround¬ 
ings. An electric wire creeps covertly into this North American 
haunt. It performs an artistic service, for at the rising hour it 
sets Paderewski to playing a soft bit of Shubert on the piano 
which stands cheek-by-jowl with the chimney. 
For the moment, we seem far from Japan, but it is just at this 
juncture that the poetic Nipponesque philosophy reappears. In 
the Mikado’s country, you will remember, the greeting of the 
guest is a delicate, an extremely subtle art, 
perhaps we ought to say religion. Not 
only is the single spray of flowers in the 
bare, the exquisitely bare, Japanese room, 
a mystical homage to you and the season, 
to the thing your coming stands for, some¬ 
thing not to be said bv any other flowers 
at that moment, but the single vase shin¬ 
ing on the raised piece of floor at the al¬ 
cove is a symbol chosen from out the 
treasure in the “go-down” outside the 
house, to say something in silent art lan¬ 
guage to you and for you on that particu¬ 
lar occasion. If you came again, you 
would see another single symbol, just as 
you would see another flower, that would 
touch the dominant note of that hour. I 
cannot pretend to expound, because I can¬ 
not pretend to understand, the full beauty 
of this symbolism. I mention it simply by 
way of suggesting how the hostess, who 
has sat at the feet of Japanese nobles, and 
who knows as few who are not Japanese 
are permitted to know, the deep meaning 
of these things, has applied the idea in this 
The kettle hangs from an ancient crane beneath 
the motto from the Book of Tea 
Big boulders fringe the brow of the hill 
and mark the edge of the terrace 
North American 
log cabin. 
For example, 
of a morning 
you will notice that the three or four objects of pewter on the 
mantel are not the copper or old Chelsea that you saw there the 
night before. To-morrow morning, you will catch the different 
hues of Wedgwood or pink lustre, and the next morning a Co¬ 
lonial setting will start your suspicion of a vast “go-down” or 
some ample China Room, a suspicion that will be confirmed by 
the happenings of the table itself. At each meal the dishes 
change, day after day, like the clouds or the shadows in the valley, 
and with them, always in an amiable harmony, the hand-woven 
runners or Colonial covers. Napkins follow suit. In the design 
of some of the Newcomb pottery as well as in the linen itself, ap¬ 
pears the Japanese characters for “Yama-no-uchi." 
“Yama-no-uchi,” the name of this picturesque estate, is some¬ 
thing of a mouthful if you take it suddenly. It was a bit puzzling 
at the last Madison Square Garden Poultry Show where the 
“Yama” Pflack Minorca hen took first prize — but that is another 
story. Marquis Ito gave the place its 
name, and the Marquis gave the transla¬ 
tion with it as “The Home in the Moun¬ 
tains,” so there you are. The hieroglyphs 
are good to look at. You are glad to 
meet them again and again in unex¬ 
pected ways and places. 
At the table, they add a little of the 
exotic to an effect that is usually not 
exotic at all. For here hundreds of Co¬ 
lonial pieces come and go — I ought boldly 
to have asked to see the China Room. 
I should like to know what the Japanese 
butler thinks of these Washington plates; 
and for that matter, what the Japanese 
maid thinks of those old American cov¬ 
erlets and patriotic pieced quilts which 
deck the Revolutionary mahogany in the 
sleeping rooms, and which displace one 
another in some daylight hour when you 
are not looking. If you are a collector, I 
can fancy your feelings. The oriental 
mind has a different perspective and 
might well be perplexed by this log cabin 
glimpse of the West touched by the pene- 
