Japanese Villages Are Dark

1905

"Without having actually seen them, you cannot imagine how dark some Japanese country villages remain, even in the brightest and hottest weather. In the neighborhood of Tokyo itself there are many villages of the kind. At a short distance from such a settlement you see no houses; nothing is visible but a dense grove of evergreen trees.

The grove, which is usually composed of young cedars and bamboos, serves to shelter the village from storms, and also to supply timber for various purposes. So closely are the trees planted that there is no room to pass between the trunks of them; they stand straight as masts and mingle their crests so as to form a roof that excludes the sun. Each thatched cottage occupies a clear space in the plantation, the trees forming a fence about it, double the height of the building. Under the trees it is always twilight, even at high noon; and the houses, morning or evening, are half in shadow. What makes the first impression of such a village almost disquieting is not the transparent gloom, which has a certain weird charm of its own, but the stillness.

There may be fifty or a hundred dwellings; but you see nobody; and hear no sound but the twitter of invisible birds, the occasional crowing of cocks and the shrilling cicadae. Even the cicadae find these groves too dim and sing faintly; being sun lovers, they prefer the trees outside the village. I forgot to say that you may sometimes hear a viewless shuttle — chaka-ton, chaka-ton — but that familiar sound, in the great green silence, seems an elfish happening. The reason of the hush is simply that the people are not at home. All the adults have gone to the neighboring fields, the women carrying their babies on their backs; and most of the children have gone to the nearest school, perhaps not less than a mile away. — Atlantic Monthly.

Living in an Elephant House

1900

If the Philadelphia gentleman who in 1882 patented a house shaped like an elephant had in view the providing of a novelty, he surely succeeded.

His idea, however, was not so much to build a house after a fresh plan, as to build one on a new principle, the object being to elevate the building considerably above the ground, so as to permit a free circulation of air below the rooms, and insure an abundant supply of light. The species of animal was quite immaterial.

The legs, being hollow, were to contain flights of stairs, while the elephant's trunk, if an elephant were chosen, might be utilized as a chute to carry slops and ashes to the sewer. For picturesque purposes he advised a trough, out of which the animal might be supposed to be feeding. This was to form the opening to the sewer.

One of these novel animal houses was actually built on Coney Island, and people had an opportunity to go all over it. It proved a satisfactory speculation, and would probably have been allowed to stand until to-day if it had not been destroyed by fire. It was a conspicuous object, being so large that it could be seen from a considerable distance. — Youth's Companion.

Vacant Farm Houses

1920

It is reported that more than 24,000 farm dwellings are without occupants in the State of New York alone. This is based on a careful survey. At the same time, not a city in New York but is confronted by a housing problem that can only be solved by a tremendous building campaign. In this condition may be noted one of the serious phases of our national problem. "How are you going to keep them down on the farm?"

That bright lights attract the youth is admitted. This is not all the story, but it is a considerable part of it, asserts the Omaha Bee. Boys and girls weary of the monotonous round of life on the farms and flit to the city. There they soon find themselves so immersed in the struggle for existence that they have little time to think of the farm. When the novelty of the city life has worn off, the ugly fact sticks out that underneath all its attractions is the specter of want, that its glittering exterior hides moral and material ugliness of a kind that is unknown to the country.


Old Clothes

Tailors say that they are doing quite as much business in making over old garments as in making new ones, says the Des Moines Register.

"I have a patron who wouldn't have appeared on the street three years ago in a suit that had a patch the size of a pea on the inside of the coat sleeve," says a local tailor. "Now he brings me his clothes to mend as long as they will stay together. He is reputed to be well to do, and I know that he lives on a fairly lavish scale, so I figure that it's a matter of principle with him. He doesn't want to buy while prices are where they are."

"Old clothes, old rags, old bottles." H.C.L. has disposed of the first part of the ragman's cry, and prohibition of the last. The old clothes man is passing out.