ways of dressing, and our streets have many of these funny names on
their signs.

Shall we look in to see them at breakfast? Tea for the children as
well as for the father and mother. They have no milk, and do not like
to drink water, so they take many cups of tea every day. And here,
too, are their bowls of rice upon the table, but no spoons or forks
with which to eat it. Pen-se, however, does not need spoon or fork;
she takes two small, smooth sticks, and, lifting the bowl to her
mouth, uses the sticks like a little shovel. You would spill the rice
and soil your dress if you should try to do so, but these children
know no other way, and they have learned to do it quite carefully.

The sticks are called chopsticks; and up in the great house on the
hill, where Pen-se went to carry fish, lives a little lady who has
beautiful pearl chopsticks, and wears roses in her hair. Pen-se often
thinks of her, and wishes she might go again to carry the fish, and
see some of the beautiful things in that garden with the high walls.
Perhaps you have in your own house, or in your schoolroom, pictures of
some of the pretty things that may have been there,--little children
and ladies dressed in flowery gowns, with fans in their hands;
tea-tables and pretty dishes, and a great many lovely flowers and
beautiful birds.

But now she must not stop to think. Breakfast is over, and the father
must go on shore to his work,--carrying tea-boxes to the store of a
great merchant. Lin, too, goes to his work, of which I will by and by
tell you; and even Pen-se and her little sister, young as they are,
must go with their mother, who has a tanka-boat in which she carries
fresh fruit and vegetables, to the big ships which are lying off