They passed a house where some artists were at work with the tools of their trade on the floor before them, forming a neat and curious collection. There were little saucers filled with paints of various colors, and the ever-present teapot with its refreshing contents. There were three persons in the group, and they kept steadily at their occupation without regarding the visitors who were looking at them. They were engaged upon pictures on thin paper, intended for the ornamentation of boxes for packing small articles of merchandise. Larger pictures are placed on an easel, as with us, but the small ones are invariably held in the hand.
COOPERS HOOPING A VAT.
In front of a house by the roadside some coopers were hooping a vat, and Frank instantly recognized the fidelity of a picture he had seen by a native artist showing how the Japanese coopers performed their work. They make excellent articles in their line, and sell them for an astonishingly low price, when we compare them with similar things from an American maker. The fidelity of the work is to be commended, and the pails and tubs from their hands will last a long time without the least necessity of repairs.
Near the end of the first day's journey the party stopped at a Japanese inn that had been previously selected by their conductor, and there they found their baggage, and, what was quite as welcome, a substantial dinner from the hands of the cook that had been sent on ahead of them. They had sharp appetites, and the dinner was very much to their liking. It was more foreign than Japanese, as it consisted largely of articles from America; but there was a liberal supply of boiled rice, and the savory stew of fish was not wanting.
The boys were rather surprised when they sat down to a dinner at which stewed oysters, green corn, and other things with which they were familiar at home were smoking before them; and Fred remarked that the Japanese cooking was not so unlike that of America, after all. Doctor Bronson smiled and said the cooking was done in America, and all that the Japanese cook had to do with the articles was to warm them up after opening the cans.
"And so these things come here in cans, do they?" Frank inquired.
"Certainly," the Doctor responded, "these things come here in cans, and a great many other things as well. They serve to make life endurable to an American in a distant land like Japan, and they also serve to keep him patriotic by constantly reminding him of home.