The boy travellers in the Far East : adventures of two youths ... - Library

VIEWS I'-ROM THE CAR WINDOWS. 103
York engage in the kindred business. There is this difference, liowever,
that the' Japanese newsbo)'s are generally men, and as they walk along
they read in a monotonous tone the news which the jjaper they are selling
contains.
The train started promptly on the advertised time, and the boys found
that there were half a dozen trains each way daily, some of them running
through, like express trains in other countries, while others were slower,
and halted at every station. The line ran through a succession of fields
and villages, the former bearing evidence of careful cultivation, while the
latter were thickly populated, and gave indications of a good deal of taste
in their arrangement. Shade-trees were numerous, and Frank readily
accepted as correct the statement he had somewhere read, that a Japanese
would rather move his house than cut down a tree in case the one inter-
fered with the other. The rice harvest was nearly at hand, and the fields
M'cre thickly burdened witli the waving rice-plants. Men were working
in the fields, and moving slowly to and fro, and ever3'where there was an
activit}' that did not betoken a lazy people. The Doctor explained that if
they had been there a month earlier, they would have witnessed the proc-
ess of hoeing the rice-plants to keep down tlie weeds, but that now the
hoeing was over, and there was little to do beyond keeping the fields
properly flooded with water, so that the ripening plants sliould have the
JAPANESE rLOUGHIKG.