The house we went into wuz sixteen feet square, divided into four square rooms. It wuz two stories high, and little 200 porches about two feet wide wuz on each story, front and back. There wuz no chimney; there wuz a open place in the wall of the kitchen to let the smoke out from the little charcoal furnace they used to cook with, and one kettle wuz used to cook rice and fish; no spoons or forks are needed. The doors and frame-work wuz painted bronze color. There wuzn’t much furniture besides the furnace and tea-kettle that stands handy to make tea at any time. A few cups and saucers, a small clock, a family idol, and a red cushioned platform they could move, high and wide enough for a seat so several can set back to back, is about all that is necessary.
Their floors are covered with a lined straw matting, soft as carpet; they sleep on cotton mats put away in the daytime; their head-rest is a small block of wood about one foot long, five inches wide and eight inches high. A pillow filled with cut rye straw and covered with several sheets of rice paper isn’t so bad, though I should prefer my good goose feather pillows. The Japanese are exceedingly neat and clean; they could teach needed lessons to the poorer classes in America.
We one day made an excursion twenty milds on the Tokiado, the great highway of Japan. It is broad and smooth; five hundred miles long, and follers the coast. Part of the way we went with horses, and little side trips into the country wuz made with jinrikishas. Quaint little villages wuz on each side of the road, and many shrines on the waysides. That day we see the famous temple of Diabutsu with its colossal bronze idol. It wuz fifty feet high and eighty-seven feet round. The eyes three feet and a half wide. One thumb is three and a half feet round. He seemed to be settin’ on his feet.
A widder and a priest wuz kneelin’ in front of this idol. The priest held in one hand a rope and anon he would jerk out melancholy sounds from a big bronze bell over his head. In his other hand he held some little pieces of wood and paper with prayers printed on ’em. As he would read ’em 201 off he would lay one down on the floor, and the widder would give him some money every time. I thought that wuz jest about where the prayers went, down on the floor; they never riz higher, I don’t believe.
Josiah wuz kinder took with ’em, and sez he, “How handy that would be, Samantha, if a man wuz diffident, and every man, no matter how bashful he is, has more or less wood chips in his back yard. Sometimes I feel diffident, Samantha.”
But I sez, “I don’t want any wooden prayers offered for me, Josiah Allen, and,” sez I, “that seen shows jest how widders are imposed upon.”
“Well,” sez he, “she no need to dickered with the priest for ’em if she hadn’t wanted to.”
And I did wish that that little widder had known about the One ever present, ever living God, who has promised to comfort the widder, be a father to the orphan, and wipe away all tears.
But the Sunrise Land is waking up, there is a bright light in the East:
In the beauty of the lilies Christ is born acrost the sea,