When the white man abandons mining-ground he often leaves behind very serviceable frame houses. John comes along to glean the gold left by the Caucasian. He builds a cluster of shapeless huts. The deserted white man's house gradually disappears. A clapboard is gone, and then another, and finally all. The skeleton of the frame remains: months pass away; piece by piece the joists disappear; some morning they are found tumbled in a heap, and at last nothing is left save the cellar and chimneys. Meantime, John's clusters of huts swell their rude proportions, but you must examine them narrowly to detect any traces of your vanished house, for he revels in smoke, and everything about him is soon colored to a hue much resembling his own brownish-yellow countenance. Thus he picks the domiciliary skeleton bare, and then carries off the bones. He is a quiet but skillful plunderer. John No. 1 on his way home from his mining-claim rips off a board; John No. 2 next day drags it a few yards from the house. John No. 3 a week afterward drags it home. In this manner the dissolution of your house is protracted for months. In this manner he distributes the responsibility of the theft over his entire community. I have seen a large boarding-house disappear in this way, and when the owner, after a year's absence, revisited the spot to look after his property, he found his real estate reduced to a cellar. John himself is a sort of museum in his character and habits. We must be pardoned for giving details of these, mingled promiscuously, rather after the museum style. His New Year comes in February. For the Chinaman of limited means it lasts a week, for the wealthy it may endure three. His consumption of fire-crackers during that period is immense. He burns strings a yard in length suspended from poles over his balconies. The uproar and sputtering consequent on this festivity in the Chinese quarter at San Francisco is tremendous. The city authorities limit this Celestial Pandemonium to a week. 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.