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

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THE BOY TRAVELLEKS.
" We have seen such lots of tilings to-da}'—lots and lots. I can't begin
to tell 3'ou all in this letter, and there is so much that I don't know
where to commence. Well, we went into some shops and looked at the
things they had to sell, but didn't buy anything, as we thought it was too
soon. One of the shops I liked very much M-as where they sold silk. It
wasn't much like a silk-shop at home, where you sit on a stool in front of
a counter and have the clerks spread the things out before you. In this
shop the silk was in boxes out of sight, and they only showed you wliat
you asked for. There was a platform in the middle of the shop, and the
clerks scpiatted down on this platform, and unrolled their goods. Two
women were there, buj'ing some bright-colored stufE, for making a dress,
I suppose, but I don't know. One man sat in the corner with a yardstick
ready to measure off what was wanted, and another sat close by him looking
on to see that everything was all right. Back of him there were a lot of
boxes piled up with the goods in them ; and whenever anything was wanted,
he passed it out. You should have seen how solemn they all looked, and
how one woman counted on her fingers to see how much it was all coming
to, just as folks do at home. In a corner opposite the man with the yard-
stick there was a man who kept the accounts. He was squatted on the
floor like the rest, and had his books all round him ; and when a sale was
made, he put it down in figures that I couldn't read in a week.
" Then it was ever so funny to see the men bowing to each other; the}'
did it with so much dignity, as if they had all been princes, or something
of the sort. They rest their hands 0!i their knees, and then bend the
body forward ;
and sometimes they bend so low that their backs are level
" .SAYUNAUA."