as his arm. And I sez,
"Children and trees have to be tackled young, Josiah, to bend their
wills the way you want 'em to go." They make a great fuss here over
the chrysantheum, and they are beautiful, I must admit. They don't
look much like mine that I have growin' in a kag in the east winder.

Their common fruits are the persimmons, a sweet fruit about as big as
a tomato and lookin' some like it, with flat black seeds, pears, good
figs, oranges, peaches, apples. There is very little poverty, and the
poorest people are very clean and neat. Their law courts don't dally
for month after month and years. If a man murders they hang him the
same week.

But mebby our ways of lingerin' along would be better in some cases,
if new evidence should be found within a year or so, or children
should grow up into witnesses.

We went into a Japanese house one day. It is made on a bamboo frame,
the roof and sides wuz thatched with rye straw, the winders wuz
slidin' frames divided into little squares covered with thin white
paper. The partitions wuz covered with paper, and movable, so you
could if you wanted to make your house into one large room. Josiah
told me that he should tear out every partition in our house and fix
'em like this. "How handy it would be, Samantha, if I ever wanted to
preach."

And I told him that I guessed our settin' room would hold all that
would come to hear him preach, and sez I, "How would paper walls do
with the thermometer forty below zero?" He looked frustrated, he had
never thought of that.

The house we went into wuz sixteen feet square, divided into four
square rooms. It wuz two stories high, and little 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 a