ONE:Village after village was passed by our young adventurers and their[Pg 163] older companion, and many scenes of Japanese domestic life were unfolded to their eyes. At one place some men were engaged in removing the hulls from freshly gathered rice. The grain was in large tubs, made of a section of a tree hollowed out, and the labor was performed by beating the grain with huge mallets. The process was necessarily slow, and required a great deal of patience. This mode of hulling rice has been in use in Japan for hundreds of years, and will probably continue for hundreds of years to come in spite of the improved machinery that is being introduced by foreigners. Rice is the principal article of food used in Japan, and many people have hardly tasted anything else in the whole course of their lives. The opening of the foreign market has largely increased the cost of rice; and in this way the entrance of Japan into the family of nations has brought great hardships upon the laboring classes. It costs three times as much for a poor man to support his family as it did before the advent of the strangers, and there has not been a corresponding advance in wages. Life for the coolie was bad enough under the old form of government, and he had much to complain of. His condition has not been bettered by the new order of things, according to the observation of impartial foreigners who reside in Yokohama and other of the open ports.
THREE:One evening Arthur Withers and Rose Lomas sat together on their favourite stile talking in low whispers. The summer dusk lagged, and the air about them was so still that between their softly spoken words they could hear the talk of innumerable insects in the grass at their feet. There had been few interruptions. So familiar had their figures become in that position, that it had grown to be almost a tradition among the people who passed that way during the evening to cross the stile without disturbing the lovers. There are ways, too, of sitting upon a stile without incommoding the casual pedestrian.The Doctor said it reminded him of a man who asked another for ten cents to pay his ferriage across the Mississippi River, and explained that[Pg 23] he hadn't a single penny. The other man answered, "It's no use throwing ten cents away on you in that fashion. If you haven't any money, you are just as well off on this side of the river as on the other."
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THREE:"'T'hat nightee teem he come chop-chop
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THREE:"No, sir.""Unfortunately, General, my name is Charlotte Oliver. Two or three times I have had use for so much concealment as there was in the childish prank of turning my name wrong side out." The speaker made a sign to the chief-of-staff: "Write the two names side by side and see if they are not one."
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