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and though it was in the main
 

The housekeeper would spend her days gossiping with the boarders in the house, while the two girls slaved from morning to night. They would have to rise at five to prepare the breakfast of broiled fish, rice, soups, and pickles for all the household — about ten or twelve people — and though it was in the main mere puttering, they were kept running up and down the stairs all day long. Very often the girls would come in and throw themselves down on the mats in my room, where they would pretend to have work to do, just to be able to rest a moment...

The question of cleanliness was the cause of considerable dissension, so much so that I was compelled to call my place the house I quarrel in. It came to a “show- down” one day...

ex Part I, “Impressionistic,” Chapter 3, “I Become a Boarder,” in Sydney Greenbie. Japan, Real and Imaginary (1920) : 37, 39
NYPL copy/scan (via google books) : link
LoC copy/scan (one of several via hathitrust) : link

somewhat superficial; focused on inefficiencies, waste of labor.
three contemporary reviews via jstor : link
 

Sydney Greenbie (1889-1960)
writer (on Japan, Central and South America, some with his wife Marjorie Barstow Greenbie (1891-1976)
still looking for substantial sources on both; some listed below.

1. “Sydney Greenbie, Author, 70, Dead
   Writer of Books on Asia and Playwright Was Head of ‘Floating University’”
   The New York Times (June 10, 1960) : 31 : link   (paywalled)
2. “Marjorie Greenbie Dead at 84; Wrote About American History”
   The New York Times (January 29, 1976) : 35 : link   (paywalled)
3. see the biographical section of the finding aid to his son (and professor of landscape architecture) Barry B. Greenbie’s papers at UMass Amherst
   link

   from which —
   “Raised to believe that his father, Sydney, was of Swedish descent, he discovered in his forties that he actually descended from a Jewish family who had fled Russia during the pogroms of Alexander II. His mother Marjorie, scion of an old New England family, was among the first women granted a PhD from Yale and taught English at Mount Holyoke College.”

4. Barrie B. Greenbie authored several books (and articles and letters to editors), including Space and Spirit in Modern Japan (1988), in which his father (and his father’s books) are referenced.
   borrowable at archive.org : link
    

   

   other Asia-related books (and other writing) by Sydney Greenbie, all “of their time” in every way. —

5. Sydney Greenbie. “America’s Responsibility in the Pacific.” The North American Review 212:776 (July, 1920) : 71-79
   jstor : link

   To engage in cooperative mandates in the Pacific (by major powers, including Japan), for health, etc. The paper seems to be directed at Japan, its fears and ambitions.

6. Sydney Greenbie. The Pacific triangle. Illustrated with photographs. (The Chautauqua Press, 1921)
   Harvard copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link
7. Sydney Greenbie. The romantic East; India, Indo-China, China and Japan. (New York, National Travel Club, 1930)
   hathitrust catalog record : link
8. Sydney Greenbie and Marjorie Barstow Greenbie. Gold of Ophir; or, The Lure that Made America (1925)
   U Virginia copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link

   second edition of above, new title :
   The Gold of Ophir; The China trade in the making of America.
   hathitrust catalog record : link

9. Sydney Greenbie. An American Boy Visits the Orient. Illus. by Alice Nicholson Seacord. A cooperative project between the American Council of the Institute of Pacific Relations and the Webster Publishing Co. (1946)
   U California copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link

   for use in schools; antiseptic line drawings throughout.
    

27 July 2024