88 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1898. 



The floor is covered with rice mats, always three by six feet 

 in size. When a Japanese house is complete, it must be of" such 

 dimensions that each room will include a certain number of these 

 mats. They make the room look very neat indeed. The orna- 

 ments in a Japanese room are few. Here you find upon the 

 wall a picture and that is about all you find in a Japanese room. 

 Any ornaments or treasures are not kept in the house, and the 

 bric-a-brac is all hidden away in a storehouse and is brought 

 out when their friends come to see them. In a Japanese house 

 there is very little furniture. There are no chairs, no stools, no 

 mantels, with a thousand things upon them, and very few if any 

 pictures. There may be a few mottoes and perhaps a little vase 

 in the corner where one little spray of flowers is kept. This 

 makes the labor of the housewife in Japan very slight. When 

 she sweeps her rooms, she dusts them first. 



After the dancing-girls are through, we will invite the musi- 

 cians in. Here are two girl musicians. The one on the right is 

 playing a "koto," which makes a sort of music that Americans 

 do not appreciate. It sounds like thumping on a barrel. The 

 one on the left is playing a samisen, an instrument that gives out 

 more music, but which seems to be composed almost wholly of 

 discords. 



The same room must serve for the parlor, reception-room 

 and chamber, if in humble circumstances. This is the way in 

 which a Japanese woman sleeps. She sleeps upon the floor, and 

 her head rests upon a peculiar kind of pillow which keeps her 

 head above the floor and thus keeping the hair from getting out 

 of shape. When cold weather comes they put one "kimona" 

 or dress on over another until they are warm enough. I 

 remember hearing one day of a girl in a mission school who 

 came down to breakfast with thirteen of these kimonas on. 

 The teacher told her to go to bed if she could not keep warm 

 without so many of these on. 



I will now show you more of Yokohama. There are two 

 parts to this city, the foreign and the native. In the native or 

 Japanese part, you see the low houses and the narrow streets. 

 In the foreign part the buildings are large. Here is a mission 



