Page:The Tourist's California by Wood, Ruth Kedzie.djvu/137

 SAN FRANCISCO 109 at the ankle like a midshipmite's, are more often seen in these republican days, when the new flag of China substitutes the black-and-orange, in clothes which are uncompromisingly American. The married women of good caste may be known by their dark apparel. Those who cling to Ori- ental custom wear a long sack over a divided skirt which meets the turned-up toes of padded shoes. Their locks, glossed with a mucilaginous dress- ing, are twined with bright ribands on feast days. Babes are wistfully roguish, enquiring and sol- emn, whether they wear spangled fillets and em- broidered caps, or disillusioning hair-bows. Once they were carried forth to be admired bun- dled in layers of soft weaves and brocades. Too often now these Chinese stuffs are discarded for serge and nainsook. But cheeks, creamy as fresh- risen puff-balls, are pressed, as always, close to fathers' cheeks, brown, like puff-balls grown old. Elder brothers disport themselves in coats and trousers of cloth, instead of in baggy tubes of satin banded with sequins and embroidered tunics slashed on the sides to show shirts of pale-col- oured crepe. But still one sometimes catches a glimpse of frail Celestial virgins, stealing by with down-bent head, their hair loosed in an ebony braid, the heels of their shoes poised under the arch of simpering feet. On New Year's Day, February first according to