Evening Star Newspaper, April 27, 1895, Page 18

THE EVENING STAR, SATURDAY, APRIL 27, 1895-TWENTY PAGES. s Ri sii The Is For Is For 4 Prescription: Rhubarb [Ipecac Or by | How's Your Stomach? S it all out of order---do you feel a tendency to nausea=== losing your appetite-=- head dizzy pitate-== does your are you is your heart pals do you suffer with that “full, stuffy” feeling after meals? If so let us prescribe for you. Take one Ripans Tabule after each meal. The best prescription a doctor ever wrotefor stomach dis= orders is incorporated in Ripans Tabules. It is one of the old standard remedies for indiges- tion. Som eof the i ngredients were used by your grandparents It is prescribed by eminent doctors daily. Read what Dr. Dam, Columbus Avenue, Bos= ton, Mass., says of the Tabules. “am indeed very much pleased with my years ago. experience with Ripans Tabules. have a customer in Portland, Maine, to whom I gave a small vial to try. This customer had two physicians steadily for a long time treating his wile for dyspepsia, and the tabules were the only thing that did any gocd.” (7 We have hundreds of other letters from eminent members of the medical profession all over the country. Im taking Kipans Tabules for your stomach disorders you are taking the best and mest efficient remedy on the market. — Ripans Tabules At All Druggists, 50 Cents Box. mail if the price (soc. box) is sent to the Ripans Chemical Co., 10 Spruce Street, New York. WHOLESALERS: F. A. Tschiffely, 475 Pa. Ave., Wash., D.C. E. S. Leadbeater & Sons, Alexandria, Va. aan ea ay oa co ASIATIC TRAVEL The Cost of a Trip to China and Japan. THREE MONTHS IN ASIA FOR $1,000 ATrip to Corea and a Journey to China. ———>——_ THE NATIVE HOTELS (Copyrighted, 1895, by Frank G. Carpenter.) OSEPH G. CANNON of Illinois and sev- eral other Repre- leave within a week or so for Japan. They will spend the summer in Asia, and will return by the opening of the next congressional session to the United States. sg The war between ae China and Japan has ie : created a great inter- est in eastern matters, and I am told that more Americans will visit Asia this sum- mer than ever before. For the past ten years the travel to Japan has been in- creasing. Last summer the seaport hotels were full of American travelers. There were fifteen people from Washington city registered at the Grand Hotel during a part of my stay in Yokohama, and you could not number the Chicago guests on your fingers and toes. As far as traveling for pleasure in Japan 1s concerned, you meet there two Americans to every other foreigner, and this year our people will cross the Pacific by the hundreds. I meet every day men who tell me they are going to Japan. Some are rich, and are going for fun. Others are business men who are ‘planning such trips to investigate the chances for investment and speculation in Asia. I met two young mechanics yester- @ay who said they were going to China to take advantage of the manufacturing and railroad movement which would probably follow on the heels of this war, and a big coal operator told me this morning that he was going out to look into the coal mines of Corea and China. I receive letters every Gay asking me as to the cost of a trip over sentatives expect to | the Pacific, and as to matters of travel in Asia, and these I wish to answer as far as possible in this letter. The Cost of an Asiatic Trip. First. as to the cost of a trip to Japan. This depends, of course, on the man. It can be made very cheaply, or it may figure up a good round sum. Traveling in Japan ‘is comparatively cheaper than traveling in Europe, and you can make a trip in Asia for less money than it will cost you to do the great European capitals. The advant- age lies chiefly in the matter of exchange. The money you take from America ts gold, and the Asiatic countries are all on the sil- ver basis. The result is you get about two dollars for one. For every hundred dollars which I drew on my letter ef credit last year I received from $19) to $200 in silver. ‘These had in nearly every respect as great a purchasing power as the same number of gold dollars in America, and it cut down my expenses nearly one-hal The average cost of travel comfortably anywhere in the world is about $i0 per day. During the trip which I took around the world six years ago I had my wife with me, and we traveled twelve months on Asiatic soil. It cost us just $20 a day dur- ing that trip, and the distances were great. Such an expenditure ought to include the best hotels, carriages, interpreters and all the necessities of travel. It can, of course, be greatly reduced if a man wishes to cut things down to the lowest notch. I met one young feliow who told me that he was going to spend a year in his tour of the globe, and that his expenses would be less than $1,500. He traveled second-class on the steamers and sought the cheapest hotels. Another of my traveling acquaint- ances was spending not more than a day, but I afterward found that this man had cut down his expenses by sponging off the misslonaries, and by making most of his tours on foot. The reduction in silvér, however, has materially reduced the cost of the Japanese trip, and, after the ocean voyage is paid for, one ought to be able to travel comfortably in Japan for about $7.50 @ day in gold. Three Months in Japan for $1,000. You can take a three months’ trip to Japan for $1,000, and have all the comforts. You could travel very well for that time on $800, and if you were especially economical I believe you could make it for even less than this. This is on the presumption that the start is made from San Francisco or Vancouver. If you go frem New York you must add about $200 for the return trip and sleepers across the continent. Here are some of the items: The round-trip from San Francisco or Vancouver to Yoko- hama, Japan, in a first-class steamer will cost you $00 in gold. If you are going to confine your expenses to $600, you have $300 left to spend. You take this to one of the banks, and they will give you nearly $600 in silver for it. The trip across the Pacific and back will take fully one month of; your time, and you will have about sixty days left. This gives you an average of $10 in sil- ver a day to spend, and, provided you do not go out of Japan, this ought to be sufficient. Hotels will cost you at the seaports from 3 to $6 per day. These hotels are for for- eigners, and they are as comfortable as any you will find in the world. Similar hotels are to be found in all the large cities, and the charges are about the same everywhere. I paid $4.50 a day at the Grand Hotel at Yokohama. At the Im- perial Hotel in Tokyo I paid $5 a day, and in Kioto and Kobe my bill was about $4 per day. The first-class rallroad accom- modations cost less than they do in Amer- ica, and the cars are equally comfortable. The hotels above referred to have suitable accommodation for ladies. The service is better than that you get in America, and the cooking is up to the standard of our best hotels. The rich traveler or the man who would spend, say, from $8 to $10 a day in gold can travel as luxuriously as he can anywhere in Europe. The people are kind, and there {s no danger anywhere you go. Traveling in China. If you wish to extend your trip to China and Corea, you can do it without a great increase of expense. There are numbers of good steamship Ines going between Yo- kohama and Shanghai, or you can travel clear through to the western part of Japan and take a steamer from Nagasaki. The trip from Yokohama to China will cost you $45 in silver by a Japanese steamer, and you can make the return trip for $68. From Nagasaki the round trip costs $30. From Shanghai you can get boats to all parts of China, but if you are to make but a short trip you will find plenty to see without go- ing outside of Shanghai. A pleasant trip is to take one of the steamers which goes up the Yangtse Kiang. It will take you a week to go to Hankow, which is 700 miles in the interior. The accommodations on the steamers are good and you will live on the ships. You will pass dozens of big cities on the way, and will get a good taste of interior China. The hotels in the ports of China cost about the same as those of Japan, and they are equally good. There is no trouble about ladies being well ac- commodated at the seaports, and the most fastidious of women will find comfortable quarters. A Corean Trip. Another way to go from Japan to China is to take a Japanese steamship at Kobe, in the central part of the empire, for Tien- Tsin. This brings you very near Pekin, the great Chinese capital, and you stop on the way at Fusan and Chemulpo, in Corea. The round trip to China and return by this rcute costs $106 in silver, and is one of the most profitable trips in the way of strange experiences that you can take. You will find a poor apology for a@ hotel, kept by a Chinaman, at Chemulpo, and if you visit the Corean capital, which 1s twenty-six miles back in the interior, you will have to have letters of introduction to the mission- aries, or to the American minister, as there is no hotel there where a foreigner can stop over night. You will be carried in chairs over the mountains from Chemulpo to Seoul, the capital, and you will have to be careful to time your trip so as to get there before nightfall. The city gates are clesed at dusk, and travelers who arrive after this have to remain outside the walls vrtil morning. Traveling in Corea must be done in chairs or on punies. You must take your food with you, and you ought to have your own bedding. There are no beds in the country inns. You sleep on stone flocrs, and everything is extremely dirty. You will find it quite expensive. It cost me about $100 to go a distance of less than 200 miles, and I had to pay all my bills in Corean cash, 3,000 of which make an Amer- {can dollar. There is no danger from the pecple, and outside of the discomforts the travel is interesting. The trip from Corea to China varies from two to four days, provided you expect to stop at Tientsin. Tientsin contains about 1,000,000 people. It has two good foreign hotels, at which the rates are about $5 per day. The trip from here to Pekin is made in a Chinese car or in a house boat on the Peiho river. You will have to take a servant with you, and the trip will cost from $25 to $#). There is a good $5 a day hotel in Pekin, and you can live very com- fertably there. ‘fravel will, however, be very dangerous for some time to come, on account of the war, and there is always the possibility of a Chinese mob. Traveling in the interior is by no means desirable, and the average American a confine his 3 resent year to Japan. piel gtensy FRA G. CARPENTER, THE SEX. A 'TRICK 0} \ He Might Have Known She Had Used It. From the Philadelphia Press. ‘The women who sharpen lead pencils and open fruit cans with their husbands’ razors have passed into profane history and a new phase of feminine wickedness of the same order has been recently discovered: “What do you think?” asked the man-on- -corner, “I’ve caught my wife in the tresest trick you ever heard of. You know I shave myself; well, all winter I have noticed that my fine shaving brush—a very expensive orfe—has had a dingy look— as if it had been foffing in a dust heap. I couldn’t understand Tt, and merely decided that I must be a prehistoric man, and that my earthy formaticn was oozing out through my pores. |The brush looked so Ladly the other day, however, that I grum- bled more than nk n using my shavin, “‘Has anybody v jouse with?” I aske brush to paint the m wife. ‘No,’ she answered, meekly, ‘but I have been using it all winter to wash the dust off y house plants—it is so nice and soft Not Like Other Men. From Life. She—Papa's chief objection is that we could hardly get along on your small jary-” « aie But I have a splendid digestion, and am perfectly willing you should do the cooking. soe. A Sufficient Renson. From Truth. “What drove Banker to the wall so sud- denly? I thought he was as solid as a rock.” “He was until they changed books at the school hic children attend.” PARKS OF THE CITY They Are Gradually Blooming Into Places of Beauty, ASSUMING THE GARMENTS OF SPRING The Public Gardener Speaks of the Season’s Plans. HOW THE WORK IS DONE The public parks of Washington are the pride of its citizens and the joy of the stranger within its gates. Their improve- ment did not cost a small fraction as much as the Capitol and the other great public buildings nor anything like as much as the paving of the streets and avenues, yet it is a question as to which of these three marked characteristics of the capital city is the most admired of visitors. To the lover of the beautiful in nature, however, the parks stand pre-eminent. No other city in the world {is so favored in this re- spect. Other cities have larger and more pretentious parks than Washington, but nene have so many and so advantageously Iccated for the benefit of Its inhabitants. ‘The parks and reservations are small, but they are numerous, and Col. J. M. Wilson, the engineer officer having them in charge, is doing all he can with the funds at his disposal to make them as beautiful and at- tractive as possible. In addition to thelr important relation to the health and happiness of the citizens, they are also valuable agencies for the promotion of the study and love of arbori- culture and floriculture by citizens, as well as by those who come here from all over the country. Mr. Downing’s Work. The first practical steps for the improve- ment of the parks of Washington wero taken by Mr. A. J. Downing in 1851. That celebrated landscape architect and gardener devoted his main attention in that year to the systematic improvement of the Smith- scnian grounds. Up to that time there had been but few extensive park improvements in this country, and the success that at- tended his efforts in that direction had a mcst beneficial influence throughout the country at large in the matter of landscape gardening. Now many of our largest cities have highly improved parks, which have | cost millions of dollars. Mr. Downing de- signed extensive park improvements in this city, but his death prevented his putting them into execution. Lafayette Park and the Smithsonian grounds, however, were improved under his personal supervision, and his plans for the improvement of other parks were adopted and put into effect by others after his death, which occurred in 1832. From that year up to 1867, when the care of the public grounds was transferred to the chief of engineers of the army, no improvements of any importance were made, except in the case of the grounds around the Agricultural Department. Since 1867 the parks and’ reservations have been improved under the direction of the chief of engineers, with the limited ap- propriations made by Congress for that purpose. How well the task has been ac- ccmplished and how judiciously the avail- able funds have been used are well shown in the present admirable ccndition of our park system, which is the subject of gen- eral commendation from the park commis- sioners of other cities. The cost of main- tenance and improvement of the parks, it is asserted, is less per acre than in any ether city. Th2 appropriations for the parks, however, are not at all commen- surate, it is said, with their importance. The Senson of Beauty. The parks are now rapidly assuming their verdure, and their attractions will cortinue to increase until the advent of? the winter's frosts. From now on, through the summer and fall, they will afford pleas- use and irstruction to thousands of our pec} who visit them in their successive seasons of beauty. Mr. George H. Brown, the public gar- derer, is Col. Wilson's chief assistant in the care and maintenance of the public parks, and, like him, he has a deep per- scral interest in their welfare. A Star re- perter spent a pleasant hour with him at the propagating gardens, south of the WasHington monument and west of the bureau of engraving and printing, yester- day, and learned many interesting things atout the parks ‘that are not generally kncwn. In the course of conversation Mr. Brown said that tho parks are not at their best in the early spring time, inasmuch as the roads, walks, lawns, trees and shrubs are then in a measure all out of sorts. This is because the successive frosts and thaws of the winter months have thrown up the gravel roads and walks, and made them soft and hardly fit for travel. The grass also grows very unevenly in the spring. The hardier varieties first make their appearance in tufts over the lawn, after which the more tender and better Varieties gradually make their appearance, but do not reach perfection until the ad- vent of warm weather. The mowing, first with scythes and then with lawn mowers, cerzects all this unevenness, and thereafter the lawns are smooth and harmonious. The trees and shrubs in the parks are of many varieties and natives of different cli- mates, and therefore are of varying degrees of hardihood. During a severe winter like the one just closed they are more or less injured, giving the gardeners much work in trimming out their dead branches and shaping many of them for a new season’s growth. All this preliminary work 1s usually accomplished by the Ist of May, by which time the roads and walks have also been maie smooth for public travel by successive sprinklings and rolling by the water carts and heavy steam rollers, Acres of Flowers. The planting of flowers will soon be be- gun. In order to add to the summer beauty, of the parks, this work is usually done be= tween the Ist of May and the last of June. It is an interesting fact, that the fower beds of dll our public parks comprise an area of seven acres, a space greater in exe tent than Lafayette Park. This year these beds will be supplied with nearly 400,000 plants of over 200 kinds, having varied follage and flowers. These plants are all propagated at the gardens south of tho monument, where an hour may now ba spent most profitably in their inspection, The various styles of flower bed plant- ings, known as the carpet, the geometrical, the subtropical and the tropical bedding, have each added their attractiveness to our parks for many seasons. The so-called carpet bedding styles have gone out of fashion, not being considered sufficiently. attractive to compensate for the labor and expense necessary to their creation and maintenance. The geometrical style, how- ever, still retains its hold on popular favor. The indications are that it will next go out of vogue, and that subtropical, trop- ical and flowering plants only will be used in summer flower bed plantings. A new phase of the chrysanthemum crazo is shown in a disposition to bed plants of this species freely for late autumn park decorations. The mair difficulty in the ac- complishment of this purpose is to get the plants well in bloom before the early frosts can blight them. About 10,000 chrysanthe- mums have been propagated under Mr. Brown’s supervision this season and they will receive special attention with a view of forcing them into early bloom to dec- orate the parks. His efforts in this direc- tion will be watched with interest. If tho method adopted is as successful as is an- ticipated, a much larger quantity of these beautiful plants will be propagated next year then has been the case. The Succession of Flowers. The chrysanthemum plantings will. he fol- lowed by the bulb planting, usually done in this vicinity between the 15th of October and the 1st of November. There are about 30,000 of these for this season, chiefly hya- cinths, tulips and crocuses of many vae rieties. These plantings usually bloom in the spring months. During good weather in the winter and early spring trees and shrubs are planted in the various parks, Worn out lawns are also resurfaced with new sod, and large compost piles are mad@ for top dressing. Park settees, horse ang hand lawn mowers and a variety of tools are also put in repair for next se: work. The busiest places of all, however, at the present time, are the many green houses at the propagating gardens. They form a veritable hive of industry in the propagation and preparation of an infin! variety of plants for the usual summer ore namentation of the “breathing places” of the stay-at-homes of the capital city.