These Goods Are On Stands,
And In The Room Behind, Open To The Street, All The Domestic
Avocations Are Going On, And The Housewife Is Usually To Be Seen
Boiling Water Or Sewing With A Baby Tucked Into The Back Of Her
Dress.
A lucifer factory has recently been put up, and in many
house fronts men are cutting up wood into lengths for matches.
In
others they are husking rice, a very laborious process, in which
the grain is pounded in a mortar sunk in the floor by a flat-ended
wooden pestle attached to a long horizontal lever, which is worked
by the feet of a man, invariably naked, who stands at the other
extremity.
In some women are weaving, in others spinning cotton. Usually
there are three or four together - the mother, the eldest son's
wife, and one or two unmarried girls. The girls marry at sixteen,
and shortly these comely, rosy, wholesome-looking creatures pass
into haggard, middle-aged women with vacant faces, owing to the
blackening of the teeth and removal of the eyebrows, which, if they
do not follow betrothal, are resorted to on the birth of the first
child. In other houses women are at their toilet, blackening their
teeth before circular metal mirrors placed in folding stands on the
mats, or performing ablutions, unclothed to the waist. Early the
village is very silent, while the children are at school; their
return enlivens it a little, but they are quiet even at play; at
sunset the men return, and things are a little livelier; you hear a
good deal of splashing in baths, and after that they carry about
and play with their younger children, while the older ones prepare
lessons for the following day by reciting them in a high,
monotonous twang.
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