The record-union., 1891-01-19
CUSTOMS OF HOUSEWIVES.
Kitchen and Cooking Utensils in
the National Museum.
COMPLETE OUTFITS IN MANY PARTS
OF THE WORLD.
low They Feast in samoa-No Two
Nations Wash Their Clothes Alike
Bedrooms in the East.


/ have spent this week among the
housewives of the world, says the Wash
ington correspondent of the Philadelphia
Press. The Nationsi Museum has cook
ng utensils of every nation and every
ribe, and you may see within it how
women wash and iron, boil and bake,
stew and steam all the world over. A
picture of Samoan kitchen has Just been
received, and there are complete outfits
of Japanese and Chinese houses, with
models OF the women working away with
them
The Samoan range is a hole in the
ground, and the cooking is done with
red-hot stones. When the people want a
feast they dig hole as big as a cider bar
rel, ill it full of wood and cover it with
stones. They light the wood, and when
the stones are red-hot they pull them off
to one side and clean out the hole. They
then put layer of hot stones in the bot
tom of it, and upon this layer bana-
mas, chickens and vegetables wrapped in
leaves are laid. Another layer of red-hot
stones IS put on top, and on this another
layer OF eatables, and so on till the hole is
filed.
Upon the top a fire is built, and the
,s., ,MhoIe steans ana COOKS away until the
1ightly-dressed Samoan lady pronounces
the dinner cooked. 1t is said to be feast
for king.
HOW TO WASH.
Every nation washes its dirty clothes
differently from every other nation. The
hardest worked washerwomen in the
world are the Koreans. They have to
IN Il i
bands, and lnasmuch as every man wears
pantaloens or drawers SO baggy that they
could come up to his neck, like those of a
clown, they have plenty to do. The
washing is usually done in cold water,
and often in running streams, and there
IS here IN the museum q Korean ironing
board and irons. The board is nothing
but q block of wood, and the irons are
two paddles. The clothes are laid on the
wood and are pounded with these pad
pies until they shine like shirt bosom
fresh from a Chinese laundry.
The best dressed people in Korean are
the men. They wear the most delicate
colored gowns of cotton and silk, OF red,
light blue, pink, and green, and it takes a
woman half her time to do the washing.
You hear this pounding going ON day and
night in any Korean town, and it is one
OF the queerest characteristics of the Ko-
rean people.
every washing, and they iron their clothes
by spreading them out on flat board and
leaning this up against the house to dry
The sun takes the wrinkles out of the
clothes, and some of them have quite a
luster. The Japanese woman does her
washing out of doors. Her washtub is
not more than six inches high, and is
about rs big around as the average dish
pan. She has never heard of a washboard,
and she gets the dirt out of the clothes by
rubbing them between her hands. She
sometimes uses Japanese soap, which is
full OF grease, and she works away in her
bare feet.
If the weather is warm she will pull
her clothes down to her waist and will
feel no shame, though the streets be full of
people. No blueing is used, and as for
boiling out the dirt in a tin boiler this is
unknown.
The Chinese girls do their washing in
much the same way, save that there is
not so much publicity about it. The
pretty, Short-haired beauties of Siam wear
their gowns on them in the big river, and
wash them while taking their bath
When they get through they trot up the
steps OF their floating houses, and wrap
ping clean sheet around their bodies
they slip off their wet clothes from under
1t and wiring them out to dry. Many of
the Indian girls bathe in the same way in
the Ganges, and the washing in Egypt is
usually zone Dy the men.
The Egyptian waSherman stands naked
on the banks of the Nile and slaps the wet
clothes with the noise like the shot of a
pistol on the smooth stones at the edge of
the running water, and such fellah
women as wash pound the dirt out kof
their clothes in the same way.
The Scotch girls tramp the dirt out of
the washing with their shapely feet, tuck
ing their dresses up above the knees as
they tread the suds, and the French
women pound the dirt out with paddles,
often slapping the clothes upon the stones
as the Egyptians.
KITCHEN AND COOK STOVES.
The Japanese kitchen is always sup
piled with running water, and the cook
ing stoves shown in the museum would
be laughed at by an American housewife.
They are little affairs, about two feet
square, and the average stove cooks but
one dish at a time. They are heated with
charcoal, and in both Japan and China a
great deal of cooking is done with little
round balls made of coal dust mixed with
mud.
The Chinese and the Koreans do great
deal OF their cooking on kangs. The
kang is an immense ovenlike ledge built
IN one side of the house, upon which the
family sleeps during a cold night, and in
holes III which the cooking is done by
day.
once stopped in a Chinese inn and
took notion to go into the kitchen,
where my meal was being cooked.
found twenty dirty Tartars sleeping on
one end of the stove, and, though the
mutton was sizzling away over the open
ire, my appetite rapidly disappeared at
the sight.
The Burmese cooking-stove is box
filled with ashes, in which a fire is made
and the food is cooked upon the Goals.
no meat IS eaten, as the Buddhists fear
lney may be maSticating the bodies of
their reincarnated ancestors if they eat
anything that has had animal life. The
priests carry this to the extent of strain
ing all the water they drink, and the chief
diet is rice.
In both Turkey and Egypt the houses
OF the better class have sort of cooking
range made of stones and consisting of a
number OF little holes under which fires
may be built The floor is always of
stone, and the cooking utensils are of
copper. An ordinary harem usually has
two cooks, and the Sultan has about 500
cooks. The last Sultan before this one
took his meals at all sorts of hours, and
his chef was chained TO the coo,Sing-stoye.
Just now the meals OF the Sultan's pal
ace are cooked about mile from where
they are eaten, and the average beauty
eats her soup cold. There are no more
hospitable people in the world than the
Turks and the Turkish housewife ALWAYS
sets an extra plate.
believe the Japanese women are the