Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/360

 340 himself with the "most haughty stride and withering pride," will sing you his lines in this same puny, whining voice, and no other. The slightness of the means of illusion is a naive feature of interest in the Chinese drama. As one of the simple rustics in the Midsummer Night's Dream holds up an arm to represent a wall, across which Pyramus and Thisbe are supposed to talk, so here, if it be designed, for instance, to represent the march of an army through the woods, a screen is put up at one side of the stage, bearing an inscription which no doubt says "Woods," and around this the military betake themselves. The cemetery is more curious even than the theatre of Chinadom in San Francisco. I came upon it in the course of a long stroll one afternoon, and was almost the only spectator of some peculiar ceremonial rites in propitiation of the dead. It is not grouped in the general Golgotha at Lone Mountain, but adjoins that devoted to the city paupers, out among the melancholy sand-dunes by the ocean. It is parcelled off by white fences into a large number of enclosures for separate burial guilds, or tongs. These have large signs upon them—"Fook Yam Tong," "Tung Sen Tong," "Ye On Tong," etc. One has almost difficulty to persuade himself that he is awake witnessing such doings as here take place in the broad sunlight of Yankee-land.

It is the practice to convey the bones of their dead to China, but there are preliminary funerals in regular form. All the "hacks" in San Francisco are often engaged. The bones are left in the ground a year or more before removal.

Toward three in the afternoon a number of express-wagons of the common sort drove up with freights of Chinamen and Chinawomen, and curiously assorted pro-