The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1893-07-28

A AFTERNOON IN HI JAvANEsE VILLAGE.
ing heartily. For candy no big schoolgirl
is more greedy. In that way goes most of
the small change they get in gratuities. In
short, they are childlike in everything but
one-perhaps. They are not a bit afraid of
soap and water. They naturally love to be
clean, and the men are much the same.
Their religion may nave created the habit
in the first place, but it has become a Sec
ond nature. Courtesy, too, has by long
habit become organic. So has the forget
ting habit. The guards and other Amer
leans about the village say the Javanese Of
both sexes can forget instructions more
easily and with less embarrassment than
any other people on the grounds. When
old a thing for the seventeenth time and
reminded of the previous times, they give
a short, pleasant laugh and chatter N
thing which seems to meant: "Oh, yes;
that's so. How careless of me to forgetit."
The Javanese theater is quite a curiosity,
all the more because the dancers are
loaned for this occasion only by the only
sultan who retains any considerable power
in Java. The Dutch control most of the
island. As the old heather ceremonies
which survived into Christian times in Flu.
rope were regarded as he incantations of
~witchcraft for centuries, then became the
mere sports of children and finally lost all
meaning, so the old Buddhist ceremonies
in Java were degraded into amusements
for the ~conquering race, and IN time none
but the sultan and his guests were even al
lowed to see them. The common people
never see dancing by women, and those in
this Jayanese village have seen it here for
the first time. All the people, however.
can see the dancing of puppets or marion
cites, and a very complicated set is operated
here on the same stage with the women
dancers.
The remnants of the old religion which
are shown in these dances are really Hin
doc, as the Buddhist religion came into
Java from India. The women are remark
ably agile, and by a comical division of Ia
Dor allthe talking is done by one man, who
sits on the back part of the stage behind a
screen and varies his voice with surprising
success. From deep base to screaming fall
setto, through all the manifestations of
love and hatred, joy, hope and despair, he
literally runs the whole show. The whole
village is, as near as is possible in this
climate, an exact reproduction of the home
article, and as each village in Java is large
ly self governing so is this one. Indeed it
is a section of Java transplanted, the Mo
hammedan church and the theater being
exact copies.
As the Javanese may be called Malays
with a mixture of Aryan Hindoo and Mon
golian, 80 the Japanese may be styled Mon
golian with a mixture Of Malay and other
still more primitive races. But, as afore-
said, climate has done its work for many
centuries. and the latter are by far the more
progressive, aggressive and self reliant race.
In their village one sees a wonderful yari-
ETY. of things which are for use rather than
beauty, and the meni in charge 'emean bust
ness" Here and in the Agricultural build
ing one may study every detail of that mi
mute and painstaking agriculture by which
the Japanese make each cultivated acre