The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-01-18

Charles $. Leete & Co.,,
 Ia15Tu Fr&w New Haven.
 hotilla are seen floating houses and shops, whereon men, women and chill dren are at work, or are sleeping or eating. There are floating shops for the sale of fish and baskets and vegeta- bles, rice, nuts-everything. There are the famous flower boats, all gilt and satin behind their carved eXteriors, with their showing of painted and pow dered girls and divans and drink and pipes. The population is like that of Suffolk street, like that of an ant-hill, or the hold of an emigrant steamer. Over the tops of the boats on one side are seen the city walb and its edging of grass dotted with huts of mud and bamboo, and with graves that roughen the surface like the mounds of prairie dogs. On the other side are the shops of the outer city, all open to the water way, at the tops of stone stairways, given over to crowds of men, eating, drinking tea shopping, selling, buying, idling or rushing about.
 If you enter such city by water way through an arched gate in the wall you may see many pleasure-craft, called 'play-podgin boats," of glass and lacquer and gilt work, and wher- ever there Is a stone bridge will be seen a street-of the dead walls of the dwell- lings that show no windows or of long rows of shops. These shops are either wholly open, or disclose a little fanci- full railing ending with a carved lions head, to separate the public from the shop-keepers. The shopping streets are best worth a visit Every shop has | it's sign hung across the street or per pendicularly before it. The number of shops for the sale. of seals, made of wood or white metal, brass or jade stone, surprises a stranger. The im- press of a seal is as important there as written signature is here. The num- Der of tea-shops, which correspond to our bar-rooms, is also prodigious, but | they show nothing but tables and chairs and barbers at work while the customers drink. The display of veg etables is gaudy, and the cooking of cakes almost perfumes entire cities. | Tn the stores for the sale of silks or | clothing or cotton goods one sees the stock on shelves, but in most shops very little is displayed. Customers must ask for what they want And the worst goods are always shown first
 either because they bring the greater profit or because it is desired to get rid of them. One needs great patience to get at what merchant has to sell. Sometimes he shows his best stock only after many visits to his shop. The jew elry-stores are splendid repositories of beautiful things but the best one saw in China displayed nothing but a coun- ter and few score boxes. There are also as many places for selling orna- ments for women's hair as there are seal-shops. The faGehops and the Ian shops are as strange to the eye as
 they are attractive. In the shops the merchants generally keep themselves m the background, beside an inlS-slab and brush or a cup of steaming tea,
 The clerks do the work, as yousee when
 you notice the long curled-up finger
 nails of the master and the heavy jade
 stone ring upon his right thumb. Thus
 men cripple their right hands to give
 proof that they do not need to work
 It is fun to loiter in a drugstore and
 to watch the making up of prescrip' tions, for they are apt to call for dead
 beetles, dried snakes, toads stretched
 on frames, eyes of insects, and every
 thing that can be suggested by the ig.
 norance of the most backward profes-
 sion in China.