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On re-entering the town, we passed large arched gateways leading to particular quarters, and remarked in that inhabited by the Chinese, the grotesque-looking houses, lit up with large paper-lanterns, of gaudy colours, and Chinese inscriptions or monsters on them, and the long rows of Chinese characters up and down the door-posts, or over the windows.
Missy betook herself to her room, but it was filled up with two of the girls and a bolt of cheesecloth; to the dining room, but there was no inspiration in the sight of Marguerite polishing the spare silver; to the side porch, but one cannot work where giggling girls sway and shriek on tall ladders, hanging paper-lanterns; to the summerhouse, but even to this refuge the Baby followed her, finally upsetting the water-colour box.
The candles burnt in the paper-lanterns render them extremely dangerous, as they are fixed by a socket inside the lower end of the candle, which fits on a peg in the lantern generally very loosely; and as they flare a great deal, very little wind or motion will cause a conflagration.
Fires are necessarily frequent, as the majority of the houses are constructed of wood; and such dangerous articles as paper-lanterns, small charcoal fire-boxes, and movable open stoves, for household purposes, are in common use.
Half the town was out for a walk, and all the people's clothes were indigo, and so were the shadows, and most of the paper-lanterns were drops of blood red.
But in peace, that too passes into mere demand of the ostentations, of the pipeclays and the blank cartridges; and, except that Naval men are occasionally, on long voyages, forced to hold their tongue, and converse with the dumb elements, and illimitable oceans, that moan and rave there without you and within you, which is a great advantage to the Naval man, our poor United Services have to make conversational windbags and ostentational paper-lanterns of themselves, or do worse, even as the others.
Really the buildings are several stories high; but you do not observe this at once, especially if there be no moon, because only the lower stories are illuminated up to their awnings, above which all is darkness. The illumination is made by lamps behind the narrow paper-paned doors, and by the paper-lanterns hanging outside, one at every door.
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