A FADING PICTURE
We move slowly out of the wide green bay. The groups of women grow
smaller in the distance. The country of round umbrellas with a thousand
ribs fades gradually from our sight.
Now the vast ocean opens before us, immense, colorless, solitary; a
solemn repose after so much that is too ingenious and too small.
The wooded mountains, the flowery capes disappear. And Japan remains
faithful to itself, with its picturesque rocks, its quaint islands on
which the trees tastefully arrange themselves in groups--studied,
perhaps, but charmingly pretty.