And now, where? As we have seen how our Caucasian fellow-citizens, when unrestrained by the officers of the law, fool away their money at the gaming-table, suppose we go up to Dupont street and see how the Mongolians do that sort of thing. We pass up Washington street a couple of blocks, leaving the City Hall, with the gloomy "calaboose" in its basement, and the bright little garden-plat of a plaza on our left, and turn to the right into Dupont street. We are close on the Barbary Coast. A moment since we were exclusively among Caucasians, male and female, well dressed, and for the most part talking our language; we have gone hardly ten steps, and seem to be in another world. The uncouth jargon of the Celestial Empire resounds on every side. The stores are filled with strange-looking packages of goods from the Orient; over the doorways are great signs, with letters in gold or vermillion, cut into the brilliant blue or black groundwork, the purport whereof we know not. Little women in black or blue silk sacques and loose trousers, hair wonderfully gotten up, and slippers with soles an inch or two in thickness, such as we saw running around by daylight, gaze at us with their almond-shaped black eyes, and nod knowingly at the policeman who has kindly volunteered to accompany us. Men with long queues hanging down their backs to their very heels, and clad in the costume of a far-off land, crowd the sidewalks, and jostle each other and ourselves around the lottery-shops and the doors of their own oamblinor-houses. The air is redolent of a strange, dreamy odor, which you
