The Savannah morning news., 1902-10-12

Amusing as il is to stand in the club
windows of Yokohama and watch the
types of foreigners as they rikish along
the Bund to the silk-handkerchiefs shop.
il is much better fund to watch Japa-
nese riksha-riders going to Shiba on a
holiday. A foreigner is expected TO
take two rikshaboys. A rikshaboy is
expected to take two Japanese-some-
times an old Darby and Joan is sad
colored silk kimonos; sometimes a
black-toothed duenna escorting a gel
sha with whitened face and butterfly
robes; sometimes two gay little NOUS
mees. though they cannot often at
ford it.
To see a brilliant geisha, OF two
sweet little mousmees, bowling along
under the cherry blossom avenues is as
pretty a sight, as il is revolving to see
the sake-baku with his head tumbling
off. You don't see many drunken
people, considering that Japanese see
no harm in it. A rikshaboy would
think 1t far more indecent to see a
sober foreigners walking than a drunk
en- japanese rikshing. Like gondoliers
and Paris cabmen, they think that
foreigners has no right to be in the
streets without paying for it.
There is one comfort about jinriksha-
boys-they have no connection with
heaven. The first rikshaboy was not
a nephew of the sun; you have not
got to learn anything about them from
art books. The jinriksha is of low
origin. 1t is doubtful if there was
such thing in the old Japan.
which dated from the Flood to 1868.
They were invented by an American
cobbler who was also a missionary,
and started as a modified perambula-
tor for a paralytic old gentleman of
Kyoto who found his kago uncomfort-
able. The first license to manufac-
ture them dates from 1870. The Os-
tend bath-chair and the perambulator
might claim &c, be the grandparents of
this busy little go-cart; it looks like
a perambulator, and is drawn like a
bath-chair-a donkey bath-chair.
The RiIxshaboy Always Hungry.
The rikshaboy, like the Italian cab
by. likes anything better than driving.
Shopping, for which he will have his
commission, comes first; if you don't
shop or take kodaks or stop before a
temple or a new Buddha made out of
old mirrors at decently short inter-
walls, he asks with engaging politeness
if he may stop for a smoke or pulls
up at rikshaboys' tea-house.
A rikshaboys' tea-house is like the
tina tched stable with the front of, in
which the Holy Family receive the
medieval pictures. Looking like a
jackdaw, with the aid of two chop
sticks, he shovels a slop basin full of
rice or macaroni down his throat in
less time than a healthy American
could swallow a cup of hot tea. He
makes a beak of his lips while he is
putting himself outside the macaroni.
The chopsticks are worked with a
birds beak movement, and the food is
oh 4 -.
looking Japanese tea He gives a few
belches-the Japanese way of returning
thanks, fills his PsRAf. empties it in
three whiffs, tips the ashes out, mop
himself, uses the back of his hands as
his pocket handkerchief, and Is ready
to go on.
They Die Young.
The rikshaboy is said to be short
lived, which is put down to long runs,
foreigners fat, and all weathers. They
do die of heart disease-who wouldn't
If he took his meals like that and ran
ten miles directly afterwards with a
bath-chair behind him?
Apart from behavior, he is a sore
trial to betrothed foreigners. Two
foreigners cannot go in one riksha,
and two rikshaboys canont go side
by side. Which has other disadvan-
tages besides unsociability If this In
dian file is brought to sudden halt.
But they have calls for going round
corners and stopping. like Venetian
gondoliers. 1t is not the native they
| upset, but the foreigners who won't
| give them their heads. AS we were
| going from Kyoto to Lake Biwa /
spied a Daimio lantern for sale, a
| thing l had been chasing for months.
1 stopped my man so suddenly that
the rest of my party were shot out OF
their rikshas backward like the con-
/ tents of a dust cart