It wuz surrounded on all four sides with a wire trellis, with archways openin’ on four sides, and all over these pretty trellises climbin’ roses and honeysuckles, and all lovely climbin’ plants covered it into four walls of perfect beauty.

It wuz truly the World’s Rose Garden.

Well might Josiah say he wuz sick of flowers, and wanted to see some plain cord wood!  Why, that day we see in one batch twenty thousand orchids, six thousand Parmee violets, and one man—­jest one man—­sent ’leven hundred ivies and one thousand hydarangeas, and every flower you ever hearn on in proportion, let alone what all the other men all over the earth had sent.

On the north side of the island Japan jest shows herself at her very best, and lets the world see her in a native village, and how she raises flowers, and makes shrubs and trees look curious as anything you ever see, and curiouser, too; all surrounded a temple where she keeps what she calls her religion, and lots of other things.

Japan is one of the likeliest countries that are represented in Columbuses doin’s.  She wuz the first country to respond to the invitation to take part in it, and I spoze mebby that is the reason that Chicago gin her this beautiful place to hold her own individual doin’s in.  The temple is a gorgeous-lookin’ one, but queer as anything—­as anything I ever see.

But then, on the other hand, I spoze them Japans would call the Jonesville meetin’-house queer; for what is strange in one country is second nater in another.

This temple is built with one body and two wings, to represent the Phoenix—­or so they say; the wood part wuz built in Japan and put up here by native Japans, brung over for that purpose.

It is elaborate and gorgeous-lookin’ in the extreme, and the gorgeousness a-differin’ from our gorgeousness as one star differeth from a rutabaga turnip.

Not that I mean any disrespect to Japan or the United States by the metafor, but I had to use a strong one to show off the difference.

In one wing of the temple is exhibited articles from one thousand to four thousand years old—­old bronzes, and arms, and first attempts at pottery and lacquer.

Some of these illustrate arts that are lost fur back in the past—­I d’no how or where, nor Josiah don’t.

In the other wing are Japan productions four hundred years old, showin’ the state of the country when Columbus sot out to discover their country; for it wuz stories of a wonderful island—­most probable Japan—­that wuz one thing that influenced Columbus strong.

In the main buildin’ are sights and sights of goods from Japan at the present day.

All of the north part of the island is a marvellous show of their skill and ingenuity in landscape gardenin’, and dwarf trees, and the wonderful garden effects for which they are noted.

They make a present of the temple and all of these horticultural works to Chicago.