The record-union., 1891-01-19

best housekeepers in the world. They
are certainly the most ,cleaniy, and a
japanese girl has more cleanliness in her
little finger than the prudish woman of
Holland has in her whole body. The
Dutch are always scrubbing their floors
and their pans. They tie up the tails of
their cows at night in order that they
may not get dirty while resting ON the
dusty noor where they sleep, and they
are stIcklers for clean linen and wood.
The Japanese girl makes no fuss about
being clean. She takes bath a couple of
times day in boiling hot water, and her
Hoors SHINE so you can see your face in
any part of them,> She will not allow you
to come into her house with your shoes
on, and she covers her floors with the
whitest and softest of mats. These mats
are made of fine straw. They are an
inch thick and they are pleasanter for the
bare feet than the finest of carpets Even
the poorest OF the people have something
of this kind, and there is no woman in
Japan too poor to be clean.
ORIENTAL BEDROOMS.
The bedrooms of the Orient are far
different from those of Christendom.
Fully half the women of the world sleep
upon the floor or the ground, and even
the richest of the ladies of Asia have
never known the luxury of hair mat
tresses or spring beds. Most OF these
Mongolian beauties don't know what a
feather pillow means, and there is in the
museum Japanese pillow consisting of
a lump of wood about the size of loaf OF
bread, with piece of soft paper tied on
top OF it, and SO made that it viii Just fit
into Yum 1um's neck and prop her
head off the floor.
The japanese girl never needs to shake
up her pillow, and it is her neck rather
than her head that lies upon it. The same
kind OF pillows are used in China and
Siam, and as to the average Indian woman
of Hindoostan, she does not know what
pillow means. You could buy her whole
wardrobe for dollar and a half, and she
sleeps on the floor while her husband
cuddles himself up in spoon fashion on a
bed.
The Corean pillow is about eight
inches square and a foot long. I have
seen some that were two feet long. They
are as hard as though they We're flatirons
wrapped in cloth, and there is nothing
comfortable about them. The Egyptians
use larger pillows, and the beauties of the
harems sleep on large divans, and these
are often covered with Turkish rugs.
The richest woman in China, whose
husband died worth fifty millions, had
bed fully six feet square. 1t is made of
stead of mattress. The old lady lies on
a canvas sheet stretched tightly over
this and she does not know what springs
are. The Japanese sleep on the floor.
They have thick comfortables, which
they spread on the floor at night, and
which they pack away in cupboards in
the daytime, and these constitute the bed
The Burmese also sleep on the floor, but
they usually spread down mats instead of
comtortables, and their pillows are of
bamboo. The same discomfort of Sleep
ing arrangements prevails all over the
East, and there is not a washstand in any
Asiatic bedroom.
HAPPILY EXEMPT.
There are many things, however, that
the Asiatic girl is free from. The Bur-
meSe woman never has to wash dishes.
There is one common dish for the whole
family, and at the end of each meal each
member takes his own bowl up to the
water bucket and washes it out and lays
it aside for the next meal A Siamese
woman has no trouble in making baby
clothes. She lets her boys go naked until
they are 10, and the little girls are clothed
in string and piece OF copper about as
big as the palm of your hand.
The little babies of the poor of India are
also naked, and the average Corean who
is young enough to ride free in an Ameri-
can street car, ii we could transport him
to this country, wears nothing but a lit
tie shift that comes half way down to his
waist.
Asiatic wives never have stoves to
black, and Asatic husbands are freed
from putting up the pipes. Asiatic
women have no windows TO wash, and
the Indian wife has, as a rule, no floors to
scrub. If she is a good Hindoo, and she
wants to add new beauty and sanctity
to her house, she gets a lot of the manure
OF the sacred COW and plasters it over the
floor. There are no sewing girls to bother
the average Eastern woman, and her
back never gets weak from running the
sewing machine. In many of the coun-
tries the sewing is done by men, and the
Hindoos and the Chinese make good
tailors. The Japanese women sew, but
they use large stitches, and the fine en-
broiderieS OF China are all the work of
the stronger sex.
These Eastern women have not the
same trouble in taking care Of their
clothes that our housewives have. In the
hill country of India, until few years
ago, there was tribe known as the Leaf
Weares. They wore no more than Eve
did after she had had her interview with
the snake, and it was not until the Eng
lish forced them that they put on clothes.
The Siamese woman has one strip of
cloth which she wraps around her bust
and over her shoulders, and another,
which goes around her waist, is pulled
up between the legs and tucked in at
pdCh. kAS Iule, Slle Is IlOb WIFI
shoes and stockings, and she has never
known the worries Of the corset and skirt.
The Burmese girls are beautifully
dressed. They wear the finest of silks,
and they are the prettiest girls in the
world outside the Japanese and our
Anglo-SaXon beauties. The japanese
have large wardrobes, and many a woman
in Japan has dozens of dresses which
would be priced in America, and the
cloth of which is hundreds of years old
These dresses are most beautifully en-
broidered, and the most costly thing
about the Japanese woman's dress is her
hustle. There are figures in the National
Museum representing japanese women.
The dresses are always bound round at
the waist with wide band of silk or
satin, which is tied in the back with
great bow. This band or bow is always
of the finest material, and they sometimes
cost as high as 500 apiece.
1t EXcels All Others.
[Galt GaZette.l
The RECORD- TTNION iS now ono of tha