ingled promiscuously,
rather after the museum style. His New Year comes in February. For
the Chinaman of limited means it lasts a week, for the wealthy it may
endure three. His consumption of fire-crackers during that period is
immense. He burns strings a yard in length suspended from poles over
his balconies. The uproar and sputtering consequent on this festivity
in the Chinese quarter at San Francisco is tremendous. The city
authorities limit this Celestial Pandemonium to a week.

He does not forsake the amusement of kite-flying even when arrived at
maturity. His artistic imitations of birds and dragons float over
our housetops. To these are often affixed contrivances for producing
hollow, mournful, buzzing sounds, mystifying whole neighborhoods.
His game of shuttlecock is to keep a cork, one end being stuck with
feathers, flying in the air as long as possible, the impelling member
being the foot, the players standing in a circle and numbering from
four to twenty. Some show great dexterity in kicking with the heel.
His vocal music to our ears seems a monotonous caterwaul. His violin
has but one string: his execution is merely a modified species of
saw-filing.

He loves to gamble, especially in lotteries. He is a diligent student
of his own comfort. Traveling on foot during a hot day, he protects
himself with an umbrella and refreshes himself with a fan. In place of
prosaic signs on his store-fronts, he often inscribes quotations from
his favorite authors.

He is a lover of flowers. His balconies and window-sills are often
thickly packed with shrubs and creepers in pots. He is not a speedy
and taciturn eater. His tea-table talks are full of noisy jollity, and
are often prolonged far into the night.

He is a lover of the drama. A single play sometimes requires months
for representation, being, like a serial story, "continued" night
after night. He never dances. There is no melody in the Mongolian
foot. Dancing he regards as a species of Caucasian insanity.

To make an oath binding he must swear by the head of a cock cut off
before him in open court. Chinese testimony is not admissible in
American courts. It is a legal California axiom that a Chinaman
cannot speak the truth. But cases have occurred wherein, he being an
eye-witness, the desire to hear what he _might_ tell as to what he had
seen has proved stronger than the prejudice against him; and the more
effectually to clinch the chances of his telling the truth