The gay sign-posts in front of the shops, with colors flying; the busy workmen,—­tinkers mending or making their wares; blacksmiths with all their tools set up at the corners of the streets; barbers with grave faces, intently braiding the long hair of their customers; water-carriers with deep water-buckets hung from a bamboo pole like Lin’s fish-baskets; the soldiers in their paper helmets, wadded gowns, and quilted petticoats, with long, clumsy guns over their shoulders; and learned scholars in brown gowns, blue bordered, and golden birds on their caps.  The high officers, cousins to the emperor, have the sacred yellow girdle round their waists, and very long braided tails hanging below their small caps.  Here and there you may see a high, narrow box, resting on poles, carried by two men.  It is the only kind of carriage which you will see in these streets, and in it is a lady going out to take the air; although I am sadly afraid she gets but little, shut up there in her box.  I would rather be like Pen-se, a poor, hardworking little girl, with a fresh life on the river, and a hard mat spread for her bed in the boat at night.  How would you like to live in a boat on a pleasant river with the ducks and geese?  I think you would have a very jolly time, rocked to sleep by the tide, and watched over by the dancing boat-lights.  But this poor lady couldn’t walk, or enjoy much, if she were allowed.  Shall I tell you why?  When she was a very little girl, smaller than you are, smaller than Pen-se is now, her soft baby feet were bound up tightly, the toes turned and pressed under, and the poor little foot cramped so that she could scarcely stand.  This was done that her feet might never grow large, for in this country on the other side of the world one is considered very beautiful who has small feet; and now that she is a grown lady, as old perhaps as your mamma, she wears such little shoes you would think them too small for yourself.  It is true they are very pretty shoes, made of bright-colored satin, and worked all over with gold and silver thread, and they have beautiful white soles of rice-paper; and the poor lady looks down at them and says to herself proudly, “Only three inches long.”  And forgetting how much the bandages pained her, and not thinking how sad it is only to be able to hobble about a little, instead of running and leaping as children should, she binds up the feet of Lou, her dear little daughter, in the great house on the hill, and makes her a poor, helpless child; not so happy, with all her flower-gardens, gold and silver fish, and beautiful gold-feathered birds, as Pen-se with her broad, bare feet, and comfortable, fat little toes, as she stands in the wet tanka-boat, helping her mother wash it with river-water, while the leather shoes of both of them lie high and dry on the edge of the wharf, until the wet work is done.

But we are forgetting Lin, who has carried his fish up into the town to sell.  Here is a whole street where nothing is sold but food.  I should call it Market Street, and I dare say they do the same in a way of their own.