DIFFERENT WAYS OF WASHING.

Manawatu Herald, Volume III, Issue III, 30 June 1891, Page 4

DIFFERENT WAYS OF WASHING.

According lo the World of tfaahion, the hardest worked washerwomen in the world are the Koreans. They have to wash about a dozen dresses for their husbands, and inasmuch as every man wears pantaloons or drawers so baggy that they would come up to his neck, like those of a clown, they have plenty to do. The washing is usually done in cold water, and often in running streams. The clothes are pounded , with paddles until they shine like a shirt bosom fresh from a Chinese laundry. The Japanese rip their clothes apart for every washing, and they iron their clothes by spreading them on a flat board and leaning this up against the house to dry. The sun takes the wrinkles out of the clothes, and some of them huve quite a lustre. The Japanese woman does her washing out of doors. Her washtub is not more than six inches high and is about as big around as the average dish-pan. She gets the dirt out of the clothes by rubbing them between her hands. She sometimes uses Japanese «up, which is full of grease, and she works away in her bare feot. The Chinese girls do their washing in much the same way. The pretty, short-haired l>eautics of Siam wear their gowns on them in the big river, and wash them while taking their bath. When they get through, they trot up the steps of their floating houses, and wrapping a clean sheet around their bodies, they slip off the wet clothes fro n under it and wring them ont to dry. The washing in Egypt is usually done by the men. The Egyptian washerman stands naked on the batiks of the Nile, and slaps the wet clothes, with a noise like the shot of a pistol, on the smooth stones at Ihe edge of the running water, and such fellah women as wash pound the dirt out of their clothes in the samo way. Fiench woman pound the dirt out with puddles, often slapping the clothes upon stones as the _Cgyj.ti.ns do.