Five of us gathered late in the afternoon of an August day in the cool matted rest-room in the garden. We looked on the beauty that generations of gardeners of a single vision had created. Our minds rested in the quiet as in the quaint phrase, we "tasted the sound of the kettle and listened to the incense." At length at a signal we rose. Led by the priestess of the ceremony, our host's aunt, a slight figure in grey with snow-white _tabi_ and new straw sandals, we passed by the dripping rocky fountain, with its lilies, and the azure hydrangea of the hills which, some say, suggests distance. The hut-like tea-room, traditionally rude in the material of which it was built but perfect in every detail of its workmanship, we entered one by one. According to old custom we humbly crept through the small opening which serves as entrance, the idea being that all worldly rank must bow at the sanctuary of beauty. The tiny chamber held, besides the wonderful vessels of the ceremony, a flower arrangement of blue Michaelmas daisies, and an exquisite scroll of wild duck in flight in the miniature _tokonoma_,[28] the tea mistress, our host and four guests. We drank from a black daimyo bowl which had been made four hundred years before. We passed an hour together and in the twilight we came out from the little room as from a sacrament of friendship. A year afterwards my host wrote to me, "Yesterday we had _Cha-no-yu_ again and you were in our thoughts. During the ceremony we placed your photograph in the _tokonoma_." After dinner we had _kyōgen_[29] by distinguished amateurs, one of whom, a neighbouring landowner, had lately appeared before the Emperor. After the plays he painted _kyōgen_ scenes for us on _kakemono_ and fans. He painted the _kakemono_ as he knelt with his paper lying on a square of soft material on the floor. The plays were performed in ancient costumes or copies of old ones and of course without scenery. The players were lighted by oily candles two inches in diameter, which flamed and guttered in candlesticks not of this century nor of the last. A player may make his exit merely by sitting down. The players are men; masks are used in playing women's parts. The stories are of the simplest. There was the well-known tale of the sly servant who was sent to town by a stupid daimyo in order to buy a fan, and, though he brought back an umbrella, succeeded in imposing it on his master. There was also the play of the fox who comes to a farmer to advise him not to kill foxes, but is himself caught in a trap. I also recall a story of two good tenants who had been rewarded by their landlord with an order that they should receive hats. Owing to an oversight they received one hat only between the two. Problem, how to meet the difficulty. It was solved by the rustics fastening two pieces of wood together T-shape, raising the hat of honour upon the structure and walking home in triumph under either side of the T.