cases where the cloth dyed blue was being dried in large quantities on the grave lands.
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Fig. 66.—Two dye pits under woven arbor shelter, now abandoned for their original purpose and used as manure receptacles. The trees in the rear are a typical clump of bamboo so frequently seen about farm houses.
In another home for nearly an hour we observed a
method of beating cotton and of laying it to serve as the
body for mattresses and the coverlets for beds. This we
could do without intrusion because the home was also the
work shop and opened full width directly upon the narrow
street. The heavy wooden shutters which closed the home
at night were serving as a work bench about seven feet
square, laid upon movable supports. There was barely
room to work between it and the sidewalk without imped-
ing traffic, and on the three other sides there was a floor
space three or four feet wide. In the rear sat grandmother
and wife while in and out the four younger children were
playing. Occupying the two sides of the room were recep-
tacles filled with raw cotton and appliances for the work.
There may have been a kitchen and sleeping room behind
but no door, as such, was visible. The finished mattresses,
carefully rolled and wrapped in paper, were suspended
from the ceiling. On the improvised work table, with its
top two feet above the floor, there had been laid in the
morning before our visit, a mass of soft white cotton more
than six feet square and fully twelve inches deep. On
opposite sides of this table the father and his son, of
