Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-06-29

You can get Chinaman to do this fol-
about Is cents day, and your servant in
India will work even cheaper. Now and
then your Punkah man goes to sleep, and
you notice the stoppage of the air. All you
have to do In this case is to lift up bucket
OF water and throw it out of the window. a
good drenching wakes up the Punkahwalla,
and he goes TO work again.
have seen 80 OF these Punkahs at work in
a church while the Episcopalian minister
was reading the service, and the breeze,
ADDED to the sermon, was decidedly soporifc.
This church was at Singapore, lust 80 miles
from the equator, where the sun rises and
sets the same hour the year around. Here
saw lawn tennis match. The participants
were foreigners, the ladies dressed in linen
costume and the men in white flannel suits.
| ball for him when it happened to go outside
the bounds, and they did not take bit more
exercise than was necessary.
SLEEP IN THE DAY TIME.
The modes of exercise in the far East are
of interest to people who want to keep cool
and still maintain a healthy condition In
hot weather. Foreigners in Asia get up at
daybreak, take good ride across the coun-
try or a walk before the sun gets up. They
| take sleep in the middle of the day and
great deal of whisky, but whether this has a
cooling influence or not do not know. A
great part of the hard work of the East is
| done at night, and this is especially so in
| the great Government departments. Inc
King OF Corea holds all his audiences at
night and the Emperor of China takes all
his sleep in the day time. This is so with
the King of Siam an6 the Sultan of Turkey
never goes to sleep until 1 o'clock In the
| morning.
e The question of water in the Far East is
an important one, and the water carriers
form one of the largest castles OF India. Both
here and in Egypt they carry their water
in skins upon their backs, and they sell it
BY the cup and by the skinful. These skim
bags are made of hog skins or goat skins,
and the ordinary skin will hold ten gallons.
Water is worth about a cent skin, and the
streets of Calcutta are watered by these men,
who sprinkle the water from the skin upon
the dust In Japan the streets are kept cool
by a man who carries two buckets OF water
fastened to pole over his shoulders and
lets the water out through little holes in
their bottoms. Both in Korea and in Japan
the water used for this purpose is taken from
the cutters, which form, to large extent,
the sewers of the city, and the cooling of the
air is by no means publication OF 1t.
The question of keeping cool is largely a
matter of dress. Mr.. Rockhill, the Ameri-
can who pushed his way into Thibet last
year, wore a Chinese costume during the
| Journey, and he tells me it is far cooler than
the American. All the nations of the East
| dress much better in this respect than we do.
The Japanese, during the summer, has
| practically nothing but a cotton gown to
cover his person, and his legs are bare. II
| he is working man or one OF the poorer
| classes, he takes off every stitch of clothing
with the exception of cloth around the
loins, and trusts to the tatooed marks on his
| back and legs to cover his nakedness. This
| This mode OF dressing is now prohibited in
| the cities but it is not at all uncommon In
the country, and in going through Japan
you see botn women and men clad In dress
| not much more extensive than that worn by
Adam and Eve in the garden.
One OF the incest old foreign ladies in
Japan during the past few years has been
the wife OF our Consul General at Yoko-
hama. She came from Kentucky, and she
| could not get reconciled to this nakedness
of the people. Whenever a Jinriksha man
attempted to take off his coat or his shirt
when he was pulling her carriage, she de-
| cidedly objected, and when she first came to
Japan am told that she often stopped the
pretty little Jap girls on the streets and
pinned their dresses up close to the throat,
telling them that it was immodest to wear
their clothes so.
DRESS OF THE BURMESE.
The Burmese woman dresses in the finest
of silks, but her dress consists of one long
piece which she wraps around her waist
and lets fall to her feet. This is tied at the
| front, and the opening is at this place, but
the girls have from long practice acquired
| a graceful kicking with the eet BY which
| they are enabled to keep their gowns to-
gether and avoid any exposure of the per-
son. They wear sacques, and are the bright
| est and prettiest women of the East. A
greater part of the Indians, both men and
women, dress in white cotton sheets, and
the common people of Egypt wear blue cot
ton gowns.
AS to children, those of the Orient wear
practically nothing. There are great many
mosquitoes in Siam and the Siamese have q
yellow powder which they rub over the
bodies of their children to keep off the in
sects 1t turns the babies to a rich chrome
color, and under the sun makes them shine
like gold.
ORIENTAL ARCHITECTURE.
The houses of the Far East are better
adapted to the weather than ours. The
Japanese house is formed of sliding walls of
paper, so made that he can take them out,
throw his whole home in one room or make
his house consist of a roof and floor. His
floors are usually some distance above the
ground and there is a draught of air under
them. They are covered with mating and
are not cluttered up with furniture. None
of the Siamese houses have windows, and
those which are on the water have breezes
blowing continually through then. The
land houses are built high up on piles and
the same is true of the houses of Burmah.
The Egyptian houses have very thick
walls, their roofs are fiat and thick and their
interiors are wonderfully cool. In most of
the Egyptian villages and cities the busi-
ness is done in the bazars, and the streets
are covered with mating, which is stretched
from roof to roof from the house on each
side, SO that the customers never get in the
sun in going from one store to another. The
bazars of Rangoon and Burmah are all
under one roof, and the vast business OF
Constantinople is made up of miles of little
booths arranged in streets under one vast
roof. Among the coolest houses of the far
East are those of Jerusalem. The people
here live in places that look like caves, and
their houses are in the shape of caves. The
roofs are very thick and each has a little
dome built in the top of it. The roofs are
fat, and many of the people during the hot
weather bring out their beds and sleep on
the housetops. FRANK G. CARPENTER,
DRESS IN JAPAN.