1877-] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
307 
Campbell, ami May Goldie, please send me word whether 
they have received their prizes? 
Thanks for letters, puzzles, etc., to T. Mills Clark, 
Brich, Bessie Jones, I?. W. C., Sally Ratus, Mary A. 
E., Effie, G. W. S., John W. Wheatley, and C. W. E. 
--—-♦—- 
A nast Sue’s I*jaz*le-BS«x. 
The Double Acrostic is a very pretty style of puzzle, 
and may be made interesting and instructive. I can 
scarcely believe that any of my readers ueed any teaching 
in the matter of their construction, but should there be 
some who would like to be enlightened, they can read 
the following remarks. Select two words having the 
same number of letters in each ; e. g., bird-cage, book¬ 
case, Jupiter-Neptune, Charles-Dickens, etc. We will 
take the latter for our use at this time. 
Write the letters forming the Christian namo in a per¬ 
pendicular row (number them), and the letter3/orming the 
surname in another perpendicular row exactly opposite. 
Thus-1 C..D 
2 H.I 
3 A. C 
4 R.K 
5 L.E 
6 E.N 
7 S.S 
Now find words beginning with c, aud ending with d, 
with which to fill the first linecold, card, child, cod, 
etc., and select the one which you prefer to defiue; We 
can fit the above seven lines with cod, Hayti, almanac, 
rock, love, Ellen, synopsis. Now define them. 1. A fish. 
2. An island. 3. A calendar. 4. A mineral. 5. A pas¬ 
sion. 6. A girl’s name. 7. A compendium. 
State that the initials give the Christian name, and 
the finals the surname of a celebrated author, and your 
double acrostic is ready to be worked out. 
Now I will give you one to find out. You will see that 
it has eight letters in each column. You may be able to 
find the first item at once ; if not, put a cross down upon 
your slate or paper in place of the letter you need. The 
object of filling the space with a cross, is to keep before 
you the number of let ters needed and to show what items 
you lack. You can scarcely hope to get item No. 2— 
“ The Capital of a European country’’—without the aid 
of the other items, as there are so many countries; so 
skip that (after putting down another cross, below the 
first, instead of the letter), and try the third item, which is 
more definite,and will give you aclew to the poets’ names, 
for which you will now have to search:—two names, 
each containing eight letters, the. third letter of the first 
name being the same as the initial letter of the group of- 
islands, and the second poet's name having for its third 
letter the last letter of the group of islands. Having 
found two names answering the requirements, write them 
down (as given in the sample—“ Charles Dickens ”), and 
fill in the items, which will now be comparatively easy 
(if you have found the right poets), as you have the first 
and last letter of each item. Here it is: 
DOUBLE ACROSTIC. 
The initial and final letters give the names of two 
popular poets. 
1. An island in the English Channel. 
2. The capital of a European country. 
3. A group of islands west of Greece. 
4. A city in Ohio. 
5. A country in Europe, 
6. One of the United States. 
7. A river in Spain. 
8. A city in the north of Prance. D. M. W. 
_NSWERS TO PUZZLES IN THE JUNE NUMBER. 
Positives and Comparatives. —1. Right, writer. 2. 
Prop’ proper. 3. Mast, master. 4. George, Georgia. 5. 
Kate. Cater, fi. Scamp, scamper. 
Send communications intended for Aunt, Sue. to Box 111, 
P. 0.. Brooldyn. N. Y., and not to 245 Broadway. 
E5F" Correspondents will save time, if they will ad¬ 
dress their letters to me, until the first of November (not 
afterwards), to “Rowayton, Fairfield Co., Conn.” 
’I’lie Doctor’s 'Siillts-How Things 
sire a>oaie in Otlaer Countries— 
^ionietiling' itbont tlic Japsinese. 
When I began to talk about, the. doings in other coun¬ 
tries. I did not expect to do so every month, but I had no 
idea, until I looked, that it was three months since the 
last. “ Talk.” How the time runs by 1 The space is small, 
and the things I write about are many, and I wish to 
get in as great a variety as possible. A gentleman who 
passes a good deal of time ill Japan, sends to his friends 
here, various little articles from that, country, but there is 
nothing among the presents that please me so much as 
the photographs he has .sent, especially those of the dif¬ 
ferent classes of people aud their ways. There is some¬ 
thing about photographs that makes them more satisfac¬ 
tory than any drawings or other pictures; perhaps it is 
because we feel that they represent things just as they 
are, and the imagination of an artist has had nothing to 
do with the picture. In Japan the classes are very dis¬ 
tinct, and the work-people, the farmers, and others, dress 
very differently, and live differently from the nobles and 
higher classes. • We have had within a few years so many 
Japanese in this country, that we have become quite fa¬ 
miliar with their faces ; but these arc from the educated, 
if not the wealthier classes, they dress as wo do, and give 
us no idea of the Japanese in general. It is wonderful 
that a country, which has, until 25 years ago, kept by it¬ 
self, and shut out all foreigners, should now bo so quick 
to adopt foreign ways, and to introduce all kinds of use¬ 
ful articles and customs from other countries. The peo¬ 
ple are changing so rapidly, that in 25 years more, all that 
we 6hall know of many of their customs, will be preserved 
in photographs and other pictures. 
In all cities of the East, the stranger is surprised by 
the amount of business carried on out of doors; not only 
do people work at their trade with no other shops but the 
streets, but a vast number of articles are sold by mer¬ 
chants who carry their whole stock upon their shoulders, 
and have the open air for their stores. In the cities of 
Japan this is carried on to a great extent; not only do 
the stores aud shops travel about, but even the libraries 
—for the people are great readers—go round on the 
shoulders of men, to their patrons. Figure 1 shows how 
the markets are managed, and being from a photograph, 
is very' accurate. These men hare the usual pole, 
made of bamboo, as that is both light aud Btrong; this 
goes across the shoulders, and from its ends arc hung 
the baskets, boxes, or whatever is to be carried. They 
are selling, if we except rice, the chief articles of food— 
fish, vegetables, and fruit. Fish are very abundant in the 
Japanese waters, and form the sole animal food of the 
their goods from fire. This they do by building fire-proof 
■ware-houses, and very droll houses they are. A frame¬ 
work of bamboo and timber is first built, and then plas¬ 
tered up with mud, to make a mud-shell at least a foot 
thick. The doors and shutters of the,building are made 
of the same thickness, and also of sticks and mud. 
When a fire breaks out near by, the merchant puts all his 
valuables inside, shuts up every door and other opening ; 
a paste of mud is quickly made, and this is plastered over 
every crack aud cranny. The light buildings all around 
are burned, but these mud fire-proofs stand unharmed 
amid the ruins, and answer for the Japanese merchants 
quite as good a purpose as Herring’s and other fire¬ 
proof safes do in our city fires. 
The only other picture from these photographs, that I 
can make room for, is fig. 3 (see next page). After seeing 
such a strange-looking fireman, I think you will be puz¬ 
zled to guess what may be the occupation of this gentle¬ 
man. Well, lie is—of all things in the world—a farmer 1 
He is not now in his working dress, for that is peculiar 
in being nearly no dress at all; indeed, laborers of all 
kinds, even those who work in the streets of cities, go 
nearly naked. But this farmer has on his storm rig, and 
is prepared for bad weather. At work the fiirmer would 
probably have nothing on liis head, but now he has on a 
sort of umbrella-like liat, to shed the rain, and the back 
of his head is also protected. But the funniest part of 
his out-fit is his cloak, his storm cloak, or water-proof. 
You will wonder what this cloak can be made of, and 
when I tell you that it is made of straw, you will wonder 
still more. But you must recollect that very generally in 
some European countries, and sometimes in this country, 
the roofs of barns aud sheds, and even of the dwelling- 
houses, are covered with straw, are thatched, ns it is 
called, aud that such roofs, when properly made, are both 
tight and warm. The Japanese farmer’s cloak is some¬ 
thing like a thatched roof ; it is made of a piece of cotton 
cloth, to which the straw is sowed, layer by layer, one 
Fig. 1 .— A STREET-SCENE IN JAPAN.—VENDERS OF FISH, VEGETABLES, AND FRUIT. 
lowerclasses. Their vegetables are much the same kind 
that we have, but are said to be generally of inferior 
quality ; one of their favorite vegetables is an enormous 
radish, the dialcon , which is 2% feet long, and 4 inches 
thick, aud eaten raw or pickled; among the things 
which we do not have, are lily bulbs, and the young and 
tender sprouts of the bamboo. They have apples, pears, 
peaches, and other fruits such as we have, besides some 
which we can not grow. But the strangest thing about 
their fruits is, that they eat them, peaches, apples, grapes, 
and all, while they are yet green, hard, and sour. In this 
matter the whole nation is like some boys who will eat 
green apples, especially if they can get them on the sly. 
But the boys have not the excuse for eating green fruit 
that the Japanese have, or think they have. I have al¬ 
ready stated that their principal food is rice, which 
answers them in the place of bread of all kinds, and they 
have a notion that the acid of the green fruit prevents 
any ill effects from so much rice. 
One picture (fig. 2 on next page) shows a Japanese fire¬ 
man. The buildings in Japan are not often more than 
one story high, but as they are built of very light materi¬ 
als, they burn very readily, and when a fire breaks out in 
a large city, it often burns over a great share of it, before 
it is stopped. The firemen have very small engines, not 
larger than we sometimes see used for watering gardens, 
and their hose-pipes are made of bamboo. They have 
hooks and ladders too, but instead of carrying them on a 
truck drawn by horses, a man takes them on his shoul¬ 
ders. Yon would hardly guess him to be a fireman ; he 
certainly looks very little like one of our “ fire-laddies,” 
who has more “go ” in him than a whole regiment of 
such quiet-looking citizens as this. No wonder that in a 
city in which every building is a regular tinder-box, 
where the fire-engines arc mere squirt-guns, and the fire¬ 
men look more like scholars than like boys who “ run 
with the machine,” the merchants should try to preserve 
layer overlapping that below it, in such a manner as to 
shed the rain, and though such a cloak can hardly bo 
called handsome, it keeps the wearer both dry and warm 
—and that is all that the most costly garment can do. 
You will perhaps wonder what the farmer carries at his 
left side, and perhaps think it may be his style of scythe, 
or some other farming implement—not at all, it is only 
his sword. Formerly it was the custom for all men to 
carry swords, even the common people, when dressed up, 
carried one, while the nobility were distinguished by 
carrying two swords, one above the other, on the same 
side of the body. I say these were worn, because in the 
cities, where foreigners are numerous, these old customs 
are passing away, and the better classes generally dress 
in ourstyle. Still, far back in the country, the old ways 
are followed up, and when the farmer is in full dress, ho 
still carries his sword. There is one more thing about 
this farmer’s wet-weather out-fit to be noticed—his foot¬ 
wear for wet weather. Ho has no rubber shoes, or even 
a pair of well greased cow-hide boots, to keep the mud 
and water from his feet, so he does the next best ihing, 
which is to lift his feet above the wet soil, by putting on 
a pair of wooden clogs 1 Take the farmer as he is pic¬ 
tured, and he looks very little like our farmers. But their 
style of farming is as unlike ours as the dress of the farm¬ 
ers is different. We look upon 50 acres as a small farm, 
while in Japan, 10 acres is a large one ; with us we do 
everything with horse-power and machinery that can be 
done with the help of these, but there all the work—from 
breaking tip the soil to harvesting—is done by hand- 
power and hard work. I don’t think that, the great num¬ 
bers of our boys and girls who live upon farms all over the 
country, would consider, as many do. their lot an un¬ 
pleasant. or a hard one. if they could know how much 
better off they are than farmers, not only in Japan, but 
in other parts of the world that, regard file-selves as 
more highly civilized. The Doctor. 
