Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/409

 Rh brown-paper books, with a brush for a pen. Women—much more numerous in proportion to the men than is commonly supposed—occasionally waddle by. Their black hair is very smoothly greased, and kept in place by long silver pins. They wear wide jackets and pantaloons of a cheap black "paper cambric," which increase the natural awkwardness of their short and ungainly figures. Up-stairs, in unpainted, cobwebby, second stories, are the joss-houses. Here hideous but decorative idols grin as serenely as if in the centre of their native Tartary, and as if there were no spires of little Baptist and Methodist meeting-houses rising indignantly across the way. Pastilles burn before the idols, and crimson banners are draped about; and there are usually a few pieces of antique bronze upon which the eye of the connoisseur rests enviously.

Other interiors are cabarets, which recall those of the French working-classes. A boisterous animation reigns within. The air is thick with tobacco-smoke of the peculiar Chinese odor. Games of dominoes are played with magpie-like chatter by excited groups around long, wooden tables. Most of those present wear the customary blue cotton blouse and queer little black soft hat, and all have queues, which either dangle behind or are coiled up like the hair of women. Some, however—teamsters, perhaps here only temporarily—are dressed in the slop clothing and cowhide boots of ordinary white laborers. The Chinamen are servants in the camps, the ranches, and the houses of the better class, track-layers and section hands on the railroad, and laborers in the factories and fields. What Southern California, or California generally, could do without them it is difficult to see. They seem, for the most part, capable, industrious, honest, and neat. One divests himself rapidly of the prejudice against