Wantin’ to go a considerable ways, we hired two jinrikishas, and I took Tommy in my lap, and I must say that I felt considerable like a baby in a baby carriage carryin’ a doll; but I got over it and felt like a grandma before I had gone fur. How Josiah felt I don’t know, though I hearn him disputin’ with the man about his prices––we had took a interpreter with us so we could know what wuz said to us. The price for a jinrikisha is five sen, and Josiah thought it meant five cents of our money, and so handed it to him. But the man wuz so ignorant he didn’t know anything about Jonesville money, and he kep’ a-callin’ for sen, and the interpreter sez “Sen,” holdin’ up his five fingers and speakin’ it up loud, and I hearn Josiah say:
“Well, you fool, you, I have given you five cents! What more do you want?” But at last he wuz made to understand; but when Josiah made him know where he wanted to go the interpreter said that the sedan carriers wanted a yen, and my poor pardner had another struggle. Sez he:
“You consarned fool, how do you spoze I can give you a hen? Do you spoze I can git into my hen house ten thousand milds off to git you a hen? Or do you want me to steal one for you?”
“A yen,” sez the interpreter, and the way he said it it did sound like hen.
“Well, I said hen, didn’t I?” said my pardner.
But I leaned out of my baby cart and sez, “Y-e-n, Josiah. A yen is their money, a dollar.”
“Oh, why don’t they call it a cow or a brindle calf?” He wuz all het up by his efforts to understand. They call one of their dollars a yen, a sen is a cent, and a rin is the tenth part of a cent. Josiah fell in love with the copper rins with square holes in the centre. Sez he:
“How I would love to furnish you with ’em, Samantha, when you went to the store in Jonesville. I would hand you out five or six rins and you could string ’em and wear ’em round your neck till you got to the store.”
“Yes,” sez I, “half a cent would go a good ways in buyin’ family stores.”