penniless again, with a large deficit--he meanwhile, disappearing. Some years afterwards he turned up in Minnesota, where he had married a border maiden, and gone to farming, and at the last accounts was doing tolerably well again. Californians will spin you such "yarns" by the evening--half humorous, half pathetic--and it is upon such romantic histories, that the Golden State has advanced to empire. But the day of her adventurers is passing away, and society there is fast settling down to its normal conditions. Fewer and still fewer of her people return East, to spend their hard-earned fortunes; and the generation now growing up there regard the Coast as their natural home, and love it dearly. Proud of the soil and enamored of the climate, they expect great things of the future, and surely all the world should wish them well. There are no better or braver men, than our citizens there generally, and the Pacific slope is safe in their hands and brains, beyond peradventure. "Who helps himself, God helps," is a wise old French maxim; and California believes in it, fully and thoroughly, from the Sierras to the sea. CHAPTER XIX. SAN FRANCISCO (_Concluded_). The Chinese Question, we had an opportunity of looking into considerably, first and last, and here are some conclusions. Striking the orientals at Boisè City, in Idaho, we had followed them down the Columbia and the Coast to San Francisco, and here endeavored to learn all we could about them. We found them everywhere on the streets and in the houses, in pretty much all occupations except the very highest, and were constantly amazed at their general thrift and intelligence. Out of the hundred thousand or so on the Coast, perhaps half were massed in San Francisco and its suburbs; so here was the place to see and study John Chinaman in America, if anywhere. All wore the collarless Chinese blouse, looped across the breast, not buttoned--that of the poorer classes of coarse blue stuff, but of the richer of broadcloth. Otherwise, they dressed outwardly chiefly as Americans. Here and there a Chinese hat, such as you see in the tea-prints, appeared, but not often--the American felt-hat being the rule, stove-pipes never. A Chinaman with a stove-pipe hat on would truly be an anomaly, a violation of all the unities and proprieties at once. A good many still wore the Chinese shoe, wooden-soled, with cotton uppers; but the American boot and shoe were fast supplanting this, especially among the out-door classes, such as mechanics and laborers. Pig-tails were universal, generally hanging down, but often coiled around the head, under the hat, so as to be out of the way and attract less attention. In features, of course, they were all true Mongolians; but here and there were grand faces, worthy of humanity anywhere. Their food consists chiefly of fish and rice; but the wealthier classes indulge freely in poultry and beef, and