Dr. Scudders Tales for Little Readers | Page 6

much taste.
Sometimes the wife brings her husband a segar. This people, I am sorry
to say, are great smokers and chewers, practices of which I hope that
you, my dear children, will never be guilty. In Ceylon, it is customary
for females to smoke. Frequently, after the husband has smoked for a
while, he hands the segar to his wife. She then puts it into her mouth,
and smokes.
Several years ago, one of the schoolmasters in that island became a
Christian. After he had partaken of the Lord's supper, his wife
considered him so defiled, that she would not put his segar into her
mouth for a month afterwards. She, however, has since become a
Christian.

I spoke just now of the plantain-leaf. This leaf is sometimes six feet
long, and in some places a foot and a half wide. It is an unbroken leaf,
with a large stem running through the middle of it. It is one of the
handsomest of leaves. Pieces enough can be torn from a single leaf, to
take the place of a dozen plates. When quite young, it is an excellent
application to surfaces which have been blistered.
When this people eat, they do not use tables and chairs. They sit down
on mats, and double their legs under them, after the manner of our
friends the tailors in America, when they sew. This is the way in which
the natives as a general thing, sit in our churches. It is not common to
have benches or pews for them. Carpenters and other tradesmen also sit
down either on a board, or on the ground, or on their legs, when they
work. It would divert you much to see their manoeuvring. If a carpenter,
for instance, wants to make a little peg, he will take a small piece of
board, and place it in an erect position between his feet, the soles of
which are turned inward so as to press upon the board. He then takes
his chisel in one hand, and his mallet in the other, and cuts off a small
piece. Afterwards he holds the piece in one hand, and while he shapes it
with his chisel with the other, he steadies it by pressing it against his
great toe.
[Illustration]
The blacksmiths, with the exception of those who use the
sledge-hammer, sit as do the carpenters while they hammer the iron. I
wish you could see them at work with their simple apparatus. They
have small anvils, which they place in a hole made in a log of wood
which is buried in the ground. They do not use such bellows as you see
in America.
Theirs consist of two leather bags, about a foot wide and a foot and a
half long, each having a nozzle at one end. The other end is left open to
admit the air. When they wish to blow the fire, they extend these bags
to let in the air. They then close them by means of the thumb on one
side, and the fingers on the other, and press them down towards the
nozzle of the bellows, which forces the air through them into the fire. I
should have said before, that the nozzle of the bellows passes through a
small semicircular mound of dried mud.
I mentioned that the natives do not use tables and chairs in their houses.
Neither do they, as a general thing, use bedsteads. They have no beds.

They sleep on mats, which are spread down on the floor. Sometimes
they use a cotton bolster for their heads. More generally their pillows
are hard boards, which they put under the mat. In addition to cooking,
the females have to prepare the rice for this purpose, by taking it out of
the husk. This they do by beating it in a mortar about two feet high.
The pestle with which they pound it, is about five feet long, made of
wood, with an iron rim around the lower part of it. Three women can
work at these mortars at the same time. Of course they have to be very
skilful in the use of the pestle, so as not to interfere with each others'
operations. Sometimes, while thus engaged, the children, who are
generally at play near their mothers, put their hands on the edge of the
mortars. In such cases, when the pestle happens to strike the edge, their
fingers are taken off in a moment.
The Hindoos have many modes of salutation. In some places they raise
their right hand to the heart. In others, they simply stretch it out
towards the person who is passing, if they know him, for they never
salute persons with whom they are not acquainted.
In many places there is no