Omaha daily bee., 1902-10-12

- DI.hs ~ La u w
ceiling made to take the paper shutters.
We decided tina one room would do between
the three gentlemen. so only one lot Of
tissue paper shutters we're run across the
room.
Then he brought In the kind Of beds that
we're used in the miracle Of Take up thy
bed and walk quilted mattresses an inch
or two thick. They are not much good to
lie upon, but excellent to lie under. A pile
Of them are spread on the floor and you get
under whichever layer you please. l got
under all except one. I did not find the
shape OF the floor concealed by any number
Of them and it was cold sleeping in that
paper room on such a wet night.
In the morning he walked into both bed
rooms before we we're up. The worst Of a
bed dining room is that you cannot be
late for breakfast. We told him to lay the
table on one side Of the paper wall, and
took turns to go out into the yard and
wash in a brass basin scarcely large enough
for Cruel. He had brought Chinese tea
and sugar with him. Japanese tea without
milk or sugar does not pull you together
much after a bad highland your first night
in a Japanese hotel is always a bad one;
it's too much like going to the theater-as
an actor. The proprietor and servants are
the audience. Everything you do is a per-
Torrance. Paper walls have eyes as well
as ears. That blessed boy Il mean III gave
us our breakfast. and packed for us, and
paid the bills. and feed the servants. and
showed us the sights Of Nara. and took us
back to Kyoto unmolested by further po-
lice.
JRpRn's Best Guide.
The rikshaboy makes the best guide in
Japan. So long as he has interesting
things to show you, you go on hiring his
riksha. He Is not paid as such. He Is
competing with his overnumerou brothers
Of the craft mean shaft. He adapts
himself to his patient, though his diagnosis
is not infallible. There was. for instance,
an old missionary who arrived from Amer
lea in a top hat. The rikshaboy, to whose
guidance he entrusted himself, took him
straight to the Yosbiwara. Finding the
old gentleman scandalized, he thought he
might have been too preclpitate, and asked
where he should taxi him. He was told to
go to a tailor, after taking his measure
for clothes, fancied that he had taken
his measure in another way. and wished
to take his order for a Japanese wife. In
every order that unfortunate man gave his
rikshaboy read a double %entendre.
Outside every hotel is a riksha stand,
where the little men, in white basin hats,
let their rikshas rest on their shafts and
stand smoking tiny brass pipes hardly big
enough to hold a cigarette. They only take
about three whifTs, the constantly re-hlling
prolongs the agony, and makes smoking IN
Japan very economical. Nothing is spent
on matches-the matches they make In
Japan are for Am~erica-there is always
" -N-A
is smoked through the ashes are knocked
out against the wheel-the tap-tap OF the
klseru (pipelet) and the clop-clop Of the
clogs make up for the absence of hoefs.
RumOrs Of RIksha Riding.
When you begin your first riksha ride
you say It is the very poetry of motion,
but at the end OF a thirty-mile ride the
poetry is blank verse -. - verse. 1t
takes you in the back, till you wonder IL
the sake-baku (rice-beer) befuddled Japa-
nese who rides in a riksha with his head
over the back and his tongue standing up
like a Flagstaff may not be a bona-fde
traveller who has taken an opiate to deaden
the horrors of riksha jogging.
One could make an album of the humors
Of riksha riding. Foreigners seem to in
hale a kind of laughing gas as they step
up IL NhC hoh WV NSAASANp
which is what jinriksha means. Old and
fat, young and slender, IL they are not
residents with appearances to maintain,
grin as IL they were going to have their
photographs taken, and shout as IL they
were bathing. They persist in regarding
the performance like going on a switch
back instead of going in q cab. This is
quite wrong, for rikshas in Japan are a
stern reality-a very stern reality II you
have to go far. There is the fat old man
who frightens the rikshaboy, and the fat
old woman who is frightened of him, the
! practical joking young man who finds it
hard to keep from whipping his horse. the
girl who giggles, the pretty girl who has
found a fine fresh way Of making a picture
OF herself and the child who is old enough
to be allowed in a riksha by himself. He is
the hopplest Of all. for the riksha is the
apotheosis OF the perambulator, big
babies in running prams" was a witty
F~renchman's definition OF riksha riding,
and he might have called 1t trying to acco-
immediate yourself to the proportions Of the
country.
The RIkshabOy's Holiday.
Amusing as II is to stand In the club win
dows at Yokohama and watch the types Of
foreigners as they rikish along the Bund to
the SILK handkerchief snOp, IL Is mucn DetIeT
fun to watch Japanese riksha riders going
to Shiba on a holiday, A foreigner is ex-
pected to take two ~rikshaboys. A rikshaboy
is expected to take two Japanese-some-
times an old Darby and Joan In sad-colored
silk kimonos; sometimes a black-toothed
duenna escorting a geisha with whitened
face and butterfly robes; sometimes two gay
little mousmees. though they cannot often
AFFORD 1t.
To see a brilliant geisha, OF two sweet
little mousmees. bowling along under the
cherry blossom avenues is as pretty a sight
as II is revolving to see the sake-baku with
his head tumbling OF. You don't see many
drunken people. considering that Japanese
see no harm in it. A rikshaboy would think
1t is far more indecent to see sober foreign
ers walking than a drunken japanese rik-
shing. Like gondoliers and Paris cabmen.
they think that a foreigner has no right to
be in the streets without paying for it.