[Illustration:  A Chinese Shoemaker]

One of the pleasures of Chinatown is to see the children of rich and poor on the street, dressed in their Oriental costumes, looking like tiny yellow flowers, as they pick their way daintily along the walk, or are carried in the arms of the happy father—­never the mother.  If you would make the father smile, show an interest in the boy he is carrying so proudly.

To gamble is a Chinaman’s second nature.  Games of fan-tan and pie-gow are constantly in operation; and the police either tolerate or are powerless to stop them.  Tong wars are of frequent occurrence, crime and its punishment being so mixed up that an outsider cannot unravel them.  The San Francisco police have struggled with the question, but have finally left the Chinese to settle their own affairs after their own fashion.  Opium dens flourish as a matter of course, for opium and Chinese are synonymous words.  You can tell an opium fiend as far as you can see him; his face looks like wet parchment stretched over a skull and dried, making a truly gruesome sight.  Every ship that comes into the bay from the Orient is searched for opium, and quantities of it are found hidden away under the planking, or in other places less likely to be detected by the sharp-eyed officials.  When found it is at once confiscated.

[Illustration:  In Chinatown]

The Chinese are an extremely superstitious people, and it is very difficult to get a photograph of them, for they flee from the camera man as from the wrath to come.  When you think you are about to get a good picture, and are ready to press the button, he either covers his face, or turns his back to you.  The writer was congratulating himself on the picture he was about to take of four Chinese women in their native costumes, and was just going to make the exposure, when four Chinamen who were watching him deliberately stepped in front of the camera, completely spoiling the negative.  The younger generation, and especially the girls, will occasionally pose for you, and a truly picturesque group they make in their queer mannish dress of bright colors, as they laugh and chatter in their odd but musical jargon.

A few years ago you could not persuade a Chinaman to talk into a telephone, for, as one of them said, “No can see talkee him,” meaning he could not see the speaker.  Another said, “Debil talkee, me no likee him,” but now this is all changed.  Some there are who still cling to their old superstitions, but they are few.  The march of commerce levels all prejudices, and the telephone is an established fact in Chinatown.  They have their own exchange, a small building built in Chinese style, and their own operators.  Even the San Francisco telephone book has one section devoted to them, and printed in Chinese characters.  And so civilization goes marching on, the old order changeth, and even the Chinaman must of necessity conform to our ways.