Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 September 1917 — SCENES IN A CHINESE INN [ARTICLE]

SCENES IN A CHINESE INN

Homely Industry the Main Feature of Hostelry Interestingly Described. ' by, American Traveler. The building was a long, one-storied mud hut, with thatched roof. We entered. Behold what the frontiersman had created! • The long room was the scene of homely Industry. From the center rafter hung a big oil-lamp, shedding its rays over a patriarchal family as busy as a hive of bees. By the clay stove sat the grandfather feeding the fire with twigs, and tending a brood of children playing on a dirt floor backed hard, swept clean. From one corner came the merry whir of grinding millstones, as a blindfolded donkey walked round and round, while a woman In red with a wonderful headdress gathered up the heaps of yellow cornmeal that oozed from- the gray stones. More women In red threw the bright meal high In the air. winnowing it of Its chaff: others leaned over clay mortars, pounding condiments with stone pestles. Men were hurrying here and there with firewood, cooking for the travelers. One end of the room was reserved for these wayfarers, but the k’angat the other end was divided -tota--sections. -From each rafter over each section swung quaint little cradles; in each cradle was a little hroxvn buby, each baby tended by a larger child. Far- away from the loud clamor of the western world, we fell asleep in a clean inner room, to the soft sound of swinging cradles and grinding millstones. —Alice Tisdale, in Atlantic.