Children were dressed like the older people, and very pretty were the girls in their low-necked, short-sleeved camisas or waists, and full gay skirts, their hair in straight braids hanging down over the shoulders. The short breeches, pretty round jackets, and gay sashes were very becoming to the boys. At night the daughters of the house, big and little, were locked into their rooms by their mother, the father attending in the same manner to the boys. In the morning the mother’s first duty was to unlock these doors. Various games were played. Blindman’s buff was a great favorite for moonlight nights. There was also a game called cuatrito, in which the players threw bits of stone at a mark drawn on the ground at a certain distance. “In my time,” said a prominent Californian of to-day, “we used to play this game with golden slugs instead of stones; there was always a basket of slugs sitting door. We liked them because they carried well, and we thought it nothing unusual to use them as playthings. They were abundant in most of the houses; my mother and her friends used them as soap dishes in, the bedrooms. “In the spare rooms was always a little pile of money covered by a napkin, from which the visitor was expected to help himself if he needed. We would have considered it disgraceful to count the guest money.” “Our parents were very strict with us,” said another Californian, “much more so than is the custom to-day. Sometimes while the parents, brothers, and sisters were eating their meal, a child who was naughty had for punishment to kneel in one corner of the dining room before a high stool, on which was an earthen plate, a tin cup, and a wooden spoon. It was worse than a flogging, a thousand times. As soon as the father went out, the mother and sisters hastened to the sorrowful one and comforted him with the best things from the table.” The clothes were not laundered each week, but were saved up often for several weeks or even a month or two, and then came a wash-day frolic. Imagine wash day looked forward to as a delightful event! So it was, however, to many California children. Senorita Vallejo, in the Century Magazine (Vol. 41), thus describes one of these excursions:--