Near this temple is a lovely little garden that gives much more satisfaction to the casual visitor than the temples.  It is always a pleasure to visit a Japanese garden, and, in addition to its landscape attractions, historical interest lends to this one additional charm.  The artificial lake is stocked with tame carp, which come crowding to the side when visitors clap their hands, in the expectation of being fed.  A pair of unhappy-looking geese are imprisoned beneath an iron grating within the garden.  They are kept there in commemoration of some historical incident; what the incident is, however, even the well-informed lady of the party doesn’t seem to know; neither does Murray’s voluminous guide-book condescend to explain.  A small palace, with interior decorations of the usual conventional subjects—­storks, flying geese, rising moons, bamboo-shoots, etc.—­together with a small, round, thatched summer-house, where, five hundred years ago, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, the Shogun monk, was wont to pass the time in meditation, form the remaining sole attractions of the garden.

The one place I have been anticipating some real pleasure in visiting is the Shu-gaku-In gardens, one of the most famous gardens in this country where, above all others, gardening is pursued as a fine art.  This, however, is not accessible to-day, and wearied already of temples, gods, and shaven-pated priests, I give the jin-rikisha-coolie orders to return home.  A mile or two through the smooth and level streets and the hopeful and sanguine “riksha” man dumps me out at another temple.  Fancying that, perchance, he might have brought me to something extraordinary, I follow him wearily in.  A graduate in the Shinto religion would no doubt find something different about these temples, but to the ordinary, every-day human, to see one is to see them all.  My man, however, seems determined to give me a surfeit of temples, and hurries me off to yet another one, ere awakening to the fact that I am trying to get him to return to Mr. B ’s.  The third one I positively refuse to have anything to do with.

At Mr. B ’s I find awaiting my coming an interesting deputation, consisting of the assistant superintendent of the young ladies’ seminary, together with three of his most interesting pupils.  They have been reading about my tour in the native papers, and, in the assistant superintendent’s own words, “are very curious at seeing so famous a traveller.”  The three young ladies stand in a row, like the veritable “three little maids from school” in “The Mikado,” and giggle their approval of the teacher’s explanation.  They are three very pretty girls, and two of them have their hair banged after the most approved American style.