were rushing through the Orient with everything outside the car so
strange and different from home that the shock came like a bolt of
lightning out of a clear sky.

In the car every man except myself and one other was smoking tobacco
and that other was inhaling camphor through an ivory mouthpiece
resembling a cigar holder closed at the end. Several women, tiring
of sitting foreign style, slipped off--I cannot say out of--their
shoes and sat facing the windows, with toes crossed behind them on
the seat. The streets were muddy from the rain and everybody
Japanese was on rainy-day wooden shoes, the soles carried three to
four inches above the ground by two cross blocks, in the manner seen
in Fig. 2. A mother, with baby on her back and a daughter of sixteen
years came into the car. Notwithstanding her high shoes the mother
had dipped one toe into the mud. Seated, she slipped her foot off.
Without evident instructions the pretty black-eyed, glossy-haired,
red-lipped lass, with cheeks made rosy, picked up the shoe, withdrew
a piece of white tissue paper from the great pocket in her sleeve,
deftly cleaned the otherwise spotless white cloth sock and then the
shoe, threw the paper on the floor, looked to see that her fingers
were not soiled, then set the shoe at her mother's foot, which found
its place without effort or glance.

Everything here was strange and the scenes shifted with the speed of
the wildest dream. Now it was driving piles for the foundation of a
bridge. A tripod of poles was erected above the pile and from it
hung a pulley. Over the pulley passed a rope from the driving weight
and from its end at the pulley ten cords extended to the ground. In
a circle at the foot of the tripod stood ten agile Japanese women.
They were the hoisting engine. They chanted in perfect rhythm,