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 red ends of their cigarettes gleam unceasingly. while the pale green fire-flies flit to and fro, and seem to wonder what it is all about. When the threshing is over, the farmer gives a feast to his neighbours to celebrate the event. His heaps of grain are spread evenly over the threshing floor, the straw is piled up in little stacks, and around all is twined the usual white thread to keep away the evil spirits.

To winnow the rice, it is thrown into the air by means of a wooden spade, or poured from one wide, shallow basket to another. The wind blows through the mixture of grain and chaff and carries the chaff away. The grain is stored in large baskets made of cane and plastered outside with mud. The rice is usually milled at home. The grain is placed in a big hollow in a block of wood. There is a long lever, bearing at one end a heavy wooden hammer. A girl jumps on the other end of the lever and so lifts the hammer. She hops off again, and the hammer falls upon the rice in the hollow block and smashes it up. For hours the women and girls jump patiently on and off the long handle, and in any small village you can hear the steady thump, thump, thump of the hammers from morning to night.