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, the above, his national form of oath, has been resorted to.  He has among us some secret government of his own.  Before his secret tribunals more than one Mongolian has been hurried in Star-Chamber fashion, and never seen afterward.  The nature of the offences thus visited by secret and bloody punishment is scarcely known to Americans.  He has two chief deities—­a god and a devil.  Most of his prayers are offered to his devil.  His god, he says, being good and well-disposed, it is not necessary to propitiate him.  But his devil is ugly, and must be won over by offering and petition.  Once a year, wherever collected in any number, he builds a flimsy sort of temple, decorates it with ornaments of tinsel, lays piles of fruit, meats and sugared delicacies on an altar, keeps up night and day a steady crash of gongs, and installs therein some great, uncouth wooden idols.  When this period of worship is over the “josh-house” disappears, and the idols are unceremoniously stowed away among other useless lumber.