The San Francisco call., 1896-10-11
San Francisco Bales Gain Health and
Muscle on Stow Lake

fash as they run up to a speed of thirty
five to the minute, possibly. They drip
and daily with the smooth water as the
victorious belle waits for her vanquished
rival TO come up. They furnish the best
music possible to accompany the laughter
ard iolhty of the lake party or family pic
mic, as they strike the little white caps
with clock-like regularity and precision.
There are some girls who can pull regu-
lar man-of- war stroke.
Along a seemingly endless shore line,
which the belle sees as she urges on her
shallop, the breakers of the Pacific Ocean
boom and enamel the shelving sands
with snowy foam. She stops rowing and
loo ks off seaward, being raised far above
the ocean, and, while she smells the fresh
grass of the lakes turf margins and hears
the songs of the wild birds on Straw berry
Hill, she sees big ships with masses of
sails like huge snowdrifts piled up against
their trim masts. She is at once in
land-locked lagoon and at sea with the
China and Australian liners. All of the
varied pageantry of the sea is hers to en-
Joy. Framed by the lake and the over
hanging and sunny sky, with the deep
blue ocean for background, she is
pretty picture. at the same time it may
be remarked that there is no other park
lake in the world that commands such
view.
The majority of the Chinese women who
splash with the oars and astonish the
many thousands of fishes in Stow Lake by
their queer aquatic antics go for the most
part dressed for business. They are all
bareheaded, of course. They wear a blue
upper garment and dark trousers, snowy
white stockings and Chinese shoes. Upon
their wrists are the inevitable green brace
lets of jade stone. They have some chill
dren along occasionally. The men who
attend them are few, and more often they
demonstrate their complete and entire
emancipation from social shackles by
coming and going without having any
tyrannical man to mar their pleasure or
to even hint at sexual inferiority.
But occasionally, while the Caucasian
belle holds her oars suspended, there ap-
pears at the boat landing, from which all
lacustrinic voyagers depart in boats,
vision like human butterfly. In short.
this is Chinese realization of the possi-
bilities OF color as lavishly applied to the
adornment of belle of the almond-eyed
co-dwellers in the town; her hair, plas-
tered and fixed in infiexible folds by the
application of pomades and oils, fairly
gorgeous with artificial flowers, such as
the gayest that ever grew in the gardens
of far Cathay. Her cheeks have layer
upon layer of fixed color upon them which
make up total result in concentrated
ht1o irIn oil l.
Her clothes are so shiny and so vari-
coIofed that they produce an effect which
may be summed up as iridescent.
She knows that she is stunning in
her makeup and she does not care who
knows the one fact or the other. 1t is
significant of the faith which she reposes
in her artificial complexion that she does
not row. Therefore her compile xion does
not become streaked or striped by little
telItale rills of Mongolian persplration.
The other women labor at the oars while |
she sits, like a petted child. in a rustling
mass of silks ell al, on thwart and tries
the effect of her moon-shaped eyes on the
boatmen-the coquetry of Canton and the
languor of the far East, coupled
with catlike enjoyment of sunshine. ease
and being petted. If ever human being
could be suspected of desire to purr, this
would be the person.
The lake is not monopolized by the !
ladies. but they are the more frequent
visitants. Professional men walk out
around the lake on the welI-kept path
way every Sunday morning, with chests
thrown out, with Haunting boutonniere and
dispensing an aroma of choice tobacco as
they make the circuit. The favorite route
is out McAllister street and back by the
Park and Ocean road or over the parks |
broad thoroughfares.