The Savannah morning news., 1902-10-12


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 al
ways bad one; it's too much like
going TO the theater-as an actor. The
proprietor and servants are the audi
ence. Everything you do is a per-
formance. Paper walls have eyes as
we'll as ears. That blessed boy q mean
it, gave us our breakfast, and packed
Tor us. and paid the bills. and feed the
servants. and showed US the sights of
Nara, and took us back to Kyoto I'M
molested by further police.
Jnpan's Best Guide.
The rikshaboy makes the best guide
in Japan. So long as he has inter-
esting things to show you you go on
hiring his riksha. He is not paid as
such. He is competing with his over
numerous brothers of the craft mean
shaft. He adapts himself to his pa
tient, though his diagnosis is not in
fallible. There was, for instance, an
old missionary who arrived from
America in a top hat. The rihshaboy
10 whose guidance he entrusted him.
sci, took him straight to the Yoshi-
wara. Finding the old gentleman scan
Called, he thought he might have been
TOO precipitate, and asked where he
should take him. He was told to go
to tailor, after taking his measure
for clothes. fancied that he had taken
his measure in another way. and wish
ed to take his order for a Japanese
wife. In every order that unfortunate
man gave, his rikshaboy read a dou-
BILE entendre.
Outside every hotel Is 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 Gig.
arctic. They only take about three
whiffs, the constantly re-filling pro-
longs the agony, and makes smoking
In Japan very economical. Nothing is
spent on matches-the matches they
make in Japan are for America-there
is always live charcoal handy. The
moment a pipe is smoked through the
ashes are knocked out against the
wheel-the tap-tap of the kiseru (pipe-
leD and the clop-clop of the clogs make
up for the absence of hoofs.
iiumOrs OF Riisha 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 if the sake-baku (rice-
beer-befuddled Japanese who rides in
a riksha with his head over
the back and his tongue
standing up like Flagstaff
may not be a bona-fde traveller who
has taken an opiate to deaden the hor-
rors of riksha- jogging.
One could make an album of the hui
mors of riksha riding. Foreigners
seem to inhale a kind of laughing gas
as they step up into the little IMAM
| power-vehicle," which is what jinrik-
Sha means. Old and fat, young and
slender, if they are not residents with
appearances to maintain, grin as if
they were going to have their photo
graphs taken, and shout as if they
were bathing. They persist in regard
ing the performance like going on a
switch-back, instead of going in a cab.
| This is quite wrong, for rikshas in ia
pan are a stern reality-a very stern
reality if you have to go>far. There is
| the fat old man who frightens the rik-
SHABBY, and the fat old woman who
is frightened of him, the practical jok-
| ing 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 riksha
by himself. He is the happiest of oil.
for the riksha is the apotheosis of the
perambulator, big babies in running
| prams" was a witty Frenchmans
definition of riksha-riding, and he
might have called it trying to accom-
modate yourself to the proportions of
| the country.