"Dwarf Trees in Japan" from The International Magazine


      "Our Phantom Ship -- Japan" (1851) contains these lines:

       Now we are in the house of this gentleman at Nagasaki.  His wife enters, and by their mutual behavior it is evident that ladies in Japan are to their husbands very much what ladies are in England.  This lady passes to the garden; the room ends with a projecting angle open to the garden on each side, a sort of bay, which every house has; and if there be no more ground than just the supplementary triangles on each side to complete the square, still there is always that, and that is always quite enough, for want of more.  It is enough to spend a fortune upon, in dwarf trees and vegetable curiosities.  The Japanese shine like the Chinese in monstrosities.  They can dwarf trees so well, that in a little box four inches square, President Meylan saw growing a fir, a bamboo, and a plum-tree, in full blossom...



NOTES

1    The International magazine of literature, art, and science, Vol. 3, Issue 4, July 1851, pg. 537.  Above the title in small print is "From Household Words" -- another periodical?   The International magazine began as a monthly journal published by Stringer and Townsend in New York in 1850, ceased publication in 1852, and was absorbed into Harper's.




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