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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12883 ***
+
+BY THE GOLDEN GATE
+
+or
+
+San Francisco, the Queen City of the Pacific Coast; with Scenes
+and Incidents Characteristic of its Life
+
+By
+
+JOSEPH CAREY, D.D.
+
+A Member of the American Historical Association
+
+1902
+
+
+
+
+
+
+To My Beloved Wife
+
+this volume
+
+is affectionately inscribed.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+This work now offered to the public owes its origin largely to the
+following circumstance: On the return of the author from California
+and the city of Mexico, in November, 1901, his friend, the Rev. John
+N. Marvin, President of the _Diocesan Press_, asked him to contribute
+some articles to the _Diocese of Albany_. From these "sketches" of San
+Francisco this book has taken form. There are chapters in the volume
+which have not appeared in print hitherto, and such portions as have
+been already published have been thoroughly revised. Much of the
+work has been written from copious notes made in San Francisco, and
+impressions received there naturally give a local colouring to it in
+its composition.
+
+It is not a history, nor yet is it a guide book; but it is thought
+that it will be helpful to tourists who visit one of the most
+picturesque and interesting cities in the United States. It furnishes
+in a convenient form just such information as the intelligent
+traveller needs in order to enjoy his walks and rides through the
+city. The writer in his quest among books could not find any thing
+exactly of the character here produced; and therefore he is led to
+give the results of his observations and studies with the hope that
+the perusal of this volume, sent forth modestly on its errand, will
+not prove an unprofitable task.
+
+THE AUTHOR.
+
+November 1st, 1902.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+WESTWARD
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+VIEWS FROM THE BOAT ON THE BAY
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+SAN FRANCISCO AND THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE STORY OF GOLDEN GATE PARK AND THE CEMETERIES
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THEN AND NOW, OR EIGHTEEN HUNDRED FORTY-NINE AND NINETEEN HUNDRED AND
+ONE
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+FROM STREET NOMENCLATURE TO A CANNON
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+CHINAMEN OF SAN FRANCISCO--THEIR CALLINGS AND CHARACTERISTICS
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+A CHINESE NEWSPAPER, LITTLE FEET, AND AN OPIUM-JOINT
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+MUSIC, GAMBLING, EATING, THEATRE-GOING
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE JOSS-HOUSE, CHINESE IMMIGRATION AND CHINESE THEOLOGY
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE GENERAL CONVENTION OF 1901
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THROUGH THE CITY TO THE GOLDEN GATE
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+WESTWARD
+
+Choice of Route--The Ticket--Journey Begun--Pan-American Exposition
+and President McKinley--The Cattle-Dealer and His Story--Horses--Old
+Friends--The Father of Waters--Two Noted Cities--Rocky Mountains--A
+City Almost a Mile High--The Dean and His Anti-tariff Window--Love
+and Revenge--Garden of the Gods--Haunted House--Grand Cañon and Royal
+Gorge--Arkansas River--In Salt Lake City--A Mormon and His Wives--The
+Lake--Streets--Tabernacle and Temple--In St. Mark's--Salt Lake
+Theatre--Impressions--Ogden--Time Sections--Last Spike--Piute
+Indians--El Dorado--On the Sierras--A Promised Land.
+
+
+The meeting of the General Convention of the Church in San Francisco,
+in 1901, gave the writer the long-desired opportunity to visit the
+Pacific coast and see California, which since the early discoveries,
+has been associated with adventure and romance. Who is there indeed
+who would not travel towards the setting sun to feast his eyes on a
+land so famous for its mineral wealth, its fruits and flowers, and its
+enchanting scenery from the snowy heights of the Sierras to the waters
+of the ocean first seen by Balboa in 1513, and navigated successively
+by Magalhaes and Drake, Dampier and Anson?
+
+The question, debated for weeks before setting out on the journey,
+was, which route of travel will I take? It is hard to choose where all
+are excellent. I asked myself again and again, which line will afford
+the greatest entertainment and be most advantageous in the study of
+the country from a historic standpoint? The Canadian Pacific route,
+and also the Northern Pacific, with their grand mountainous scenery
+and other attractions, had much to commend them; so also other lines
+of importance like the Santa Fé with its connecting roads; and the
+only regret was that one could not travel over them all. But one way
+had to be selected, and the choice at last fell on the Delaware and
+Hudson, the Erie, Rock Island, the Denver and Rio Grande, and the
+Southern Pacific roads. This route was deemed most feasible, and one
+that would give a special opportunity to pass through cities and
+places famous in the history of the Nation, which otherwise could not
+be visited without great expense and consumption of time. It enabled
+one also to travel through such great States as Pennsylvania, Ohio,
+Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah, and Nevada, as well
+as central California. As the return journey had also to be determined
+before leaving home, the writer, desirous of visiting the coast towns
+of California south of San Francisco, and as far down as San Diego,
+the first settlement in California by white men, arranged to take
+the Southern Pacific Railway and the direct lines with which it
+communicates. In travelling over the "Sunset Route," as the Southern
+Pacific is styled, he would pass across the southern section of
+California from Los Angeles, through Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and
+Louisiana, the line over which President McKinley travelled when he
+made his tour in the spring of 1901. From New Orleans, by taking the
+Louisville and Nashville Railroad, he would journey through southern
+Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, and so back through Ohio from
+Cincinnati, and across Pennsylvania into the Empire State, over the
+Erie and the "D. & H." Railways. By the "Sunset Route," too, the
+writer could avail himself of the privilege of going into the country
+of Mexico at Eagle Pass, and so down to the City of Mexico, famous
+with the memories of the Montezumas and of Cortez and furnishing also
+a memorable chapter in our own history, when, in September 1847, the
+heights of Chapultepec were stormed by General Pillow and his brave
+followers.
+
+The journey from beginning to end was one of delightful experiences,
+full of pleasure and profit, and without a single accident or mishap.
+This is largely owing to the excellent service afforded and the
+courtesy of the railway officials, who were ready at all times to
+answer questions and to promote the comfort of the passengers. The
+obliging agent of the "D. & H." Railway in Saratoga Springs made all
+the necessary arrangements for the ticket, with its coupons, which
+was to take me to and fro; and baggage checked in Saratoga was found
+promptly, and in good condition, on my arrival in San Francisco. How
+different our system, in this respect, from that of the English and
+Continental and Oriental railways! Luggage in those far off countries
+is a source of constant care, and in Continental Europe and Asiatic
+lands a heavy item of expense. The old world might learn in several
+particulars from our efficient American railway system, which has
+for its prime object facility of travel. The ticket was an object of
+interest from its length, with its privileges of stopping over at
+important towns; and strangely, as I travelled down the Pacific coast,
+with new coupons added, it seemed to grow instead of diminishing. One
+could not but smile at times at its appearance, and the wonder of more
+than one conductor on the trains was excited as it was unfolded, and
+it streamed out like the tail of a kite. It was most generous in
+its proportions as the railway companies were liberal in their
+concessions.
+
+It was on September the 23rd, 1901, a bright Monday morning, when
+I stepped on the "D. & H." for Albany, thence proceeding from the
+Capital City to Binghamton, where I made connection with the Erie
+Railway. Travelling on the train with me as far as Albany were Mr. W.
+Edgar Woolley, proprietor of the Grand Union Hotel, Saratoga, and Mrs.
+James Amory Moore, of Saratoga and New York city, whose hearty wish
+that I might have a prosperous journey was prophetic. The country
+traversed from Saratoga to Binghamton by the "D. & H." Railway affords
+many beautiful views of hill and valley, and, besides Albany with
+its long and memorable history and magnificent public buildings and
+churches, including St. Peter's and All Saints' Cathedral, there are
+places of note to be seen, such as Howe's Cave and Sharon Springs. By
+this branch of the "D. & H" system, Cooperstown, rendered famous by
+James Fenimore Cooper in his works, is reached. On alighting from
+the train at Binghamton I was greeted by my old friends, Col. Arthur
+MacArthur, the genial and accomplished editor of the _Troy Budget_,
+and that witty soul, Rev. Cornelius L. Twing, Rector of Calvary
+Church, Brooklyn, N.Y., who had come here for the purpose of attending
+the Annual Conclave of the Grand Commandery of the State of New York.
+At Buffalo I had sufficient time, before taking the through sleeping
+car "Sweden," on the Erie Railway, to Chicago, to visit the
+Pan-American Exposition grounds. The scene, at night, as I approached,
+was very impressive. The buildings, illuminated with electricity
+furnished by the power-house at Niagara's thundering cataract, looked
+like palaces of gold. The flood of light was a brilliant yellow. The
+main avenue was broad and attractive. The tower, with the fountains
+and cascade, appealed wonderfully to the imagination. Machinery,
+Agricultural, and the Electrical buildings, had an air of grandeur.
+Music Hall, where the members of Weber's Orchestra from Cincinnati
+were giving a concert before an audience of three hundred persons, had
+a melancholy interest for me. It was here, only a short time before,
+that President McKinley, at a public reception, was stricken down by
+the hand of an assassin; and the exact spot was pointed out to me by a
+policeman. In that late hour of the evening, as I stood there rapt in
+contemplation over the tragic scene which deprived a nation of one of
+the wisest and best of rulers, I seemed to hear his voice uplifted
+as in the moment when he was smitten, pleading earnestly with the
+horrified citizens and officers around him, to have mercy on his
+murderer,--"Let no one do him harm!" It was Christian, like the
+Protomartyr; it was the spirit of the Divine Master, Who teaches us to
+pray for our persecutors and enemies! Happy the nation with such an
+example before it!
+
+In travelling westward one meets now and then with original and
+striking characters. They are interesting, too, and you can learn
+lessons of practical wisdom from them if you will. They will be
+friendly and communicative if you encourage them. Answering this
+description was a Mr. H.W. Coffman, a dealer in Short Horn cattle, who
+was travelling from Buffalo on the Erie road to Chicago. He lives at
+Willow Grove Stock Farm, a hundred miles west of Chicago on the Great
+Western Railway, one mile South of German Valley. Naturally we
+talked about cows, and we discussed the different breeds of cattle,
+especially the Buffalo cows of the present-day Egypt, and the Apis of
+four thousand years ago, which according to the representations, on
+the monuments, was more like the Devon breed than the Buffalo. The
+names which he gave to his cows were somewhat poetic. One, for
+example, was named "Gold Bud;" and another, called "Sweet Violet,"
+owing to her fine build, was sold for $3,705. As the conversation
+drifted, sometimes into things serious, and then into a lighter vein,
+Mr. Coffman told a story about a man who had three fine calves. One of
+them died, and, when his foreman told him, he said he was sorry, but
+no doubt it was "all for the best." "Skin him," said he, "and sell his
+hide." Another one died, and he said the same thing. When the last and
+the best died, his wife said to him, "Now the Lord is punishing you
+for your meanness!" His reply was, "If the Lord will take it out in
+calves it is not so bad." I could not but moralise that the Divine
+judgments on us, for our sins, are not as severe as they might be,
+and that few of us get what we deserve in the way of punishment or
+chastening. I also met a horse dealer, who said that he shipped some
+sixty horses every week to a commission merchant in Buffalo. The
+latter made three dollars per head for selling them. They brought
+about $60 a piece. When shipped at New York, by English buyers, for
+France, South Africa, and elsewhere, they cost about $190 a head. The
+farmers of Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, and Wisconsin, are getting rich from
+horse culture and the raising of cattle. He said that fifteen years
+ago, the farmers, in many instances, had heavy notes discounted in the
+banks. Now they have no such indebtedness. When formerly he entered a
+town he would go to a bank and find out from the cashier who had notes
+there; and then he would go and buy the horses of such men at reduced
+rates. All is different now. The European demand has helped the
+American farmer.
+
+At Akron, Ohio, the energetic and successful Rector of St. Paul's
+Church, the Rev. James H.W. Blake, accompanied by his wife and Miss
+Graham, his parishioner, boarded the train; and I found them most
+agreeable travelling companions to San Francisco. In Chicago, in the
+Rock Island Station, I was met by tourist agent Donaldson, in the
+employ of the Rock Island Railway Company, and during all the journey
+he was most courteous and helpful. Here also I found my old classmate
+in the General Theological Seminary, Rev. Dr. Alfred Brittin Baker,
+Rector of Trinity Church, Princeton, N.J., Rev. Dr. Henry L. Jones,
+of Wilkesbarre, Pa., Rev. Dr. A.S. Woodle, of Altoona, Pa., the Rev.
+Henry S. Foster, of Green Bay, Wis., and the Rev. Wm. B. Thorne, of
+Marinette, Wis., all journeying to San Francisco. It was a pleasure to
+see these friends, and to have their delightful companionship.
+
+Many interesting chapters might be written about this journey; and to
+give all the incidents by the way and descriptions of places visited
+and pen pictures of persons met would detain you, dear reader, too
+long, as you are hastening on to the City by the Golden Gate. Some
+things, however, we may not omit as we travel over great prairies and
+cross rivers and plains and mountains and valleys. At Rock Island our
+train crossed the Mississippi, reaching Davenport by one of the finest
+railway bridges in the country; and as the "Father of Waters" sped on
+in its course to the Gulf of Mexico, it made one think of the Nile and
+the long stretches of country through which that ancient river wends
+its way; but the teeming populations on the banks of the Mississippi
+have a more noble destiny than the subjects of the Pharaohs who sleep
+in the necropolis of Sakkarah and among the hills of Thebes and in
+innumerable tombs elsewhere. They have the splendid civilisation of
+the Gospel, and they are a mighty force in the growth and stability of
+this nation, whose mission is worldwide. At Transfer we passed over
+the Missouri by a long bridge, and entered Omaha, a city picturesquely
+situated, the home of that doughty churchman, Rev. John Williams, and
+of Chancellor James M. Woolworth, a noble representative of the laity
+of the Church. Well may this place be called the "Gate City" of the
+Antelope State. Towards evening we reached Lincoln, the home of
+William Jennings Bryan, the Democratic candidate for the presidency in
+1896, and also four years later. The house where he lives was pointed
+out to us. It is a modest structure on the outskirts of the city,
+comporting with the simplicity of the man himself. In the morning we
+found ourselves riding over the plains of Colorado. Here are miles and
+miles of prairie, with great herds of cattle here and there. Here also
+the eye of the traveller rests on hundreds of miles of snow fences. At
+last we have our first view of the Rocky Mountains, that great rampart
+rising up from the plains like huge banks of clouds. It was indeed an
+imposing view; and it reminded me of the day when, sailing across the
+sea from Cyprus, I first saw the mountains of Lebanon. You almost feel
+as if you are going over a sea on this plain, with the Rocky Mountains
+as an immovable wall to curb it in its tempests. One thought greatly
+impressed me in the journey thus far, and this is the wonderful
+agricultural resources of our country. We were travelling over but one
+belt of the landscape. Its revelations of fertility, of cultivation,
+of products, of prosperity, of thrifty homes, of contented peoples,
+made one feel indeed that this is a land of plenty, and that we are a
+nation blessed in no ordinary way.
+
+The City of Denver is beautiful for situation, with the Rocky
+Mountains fifteen miles to the west. As it is on the western border of
+the great plain, you can hardly at first realise what its elevation
+is. Yet it is 5,270 feet above the sea, lacking only ten feet of being
+a mile above tide water. The atmosphere is clear and crisp, and the
+mountain air exhilarates one in no ordinary degree. Although founded
+only as far back as 1858, it has to-day a population of 134,000,
+and it is steadily growing. It has well equipped hotels such as the
+Palace, the Windsor, the Albany and the St. James. It has also fine
+public buildings, flourishing churches and schools, and many beautiful
+homes. There is an air of prosperity everywhere. Here among other
+places which I visited is Wolfe Hall, a boarding and day school
+for girls, well equipped for its work, with Miss Margaret Kerr, a
+grand-daughter of the late Rev. Dr. John Brown, of Newburgh, N.Y., for
+its principal. I also met the Rev. Dr. H. Martyn Hart, a man of strong
+personality. I found him in St. John's Cathedral, of which he is the
+Dean, and of which he is justly proud. It is a churchly edifice,
+and it suggests some of the architectural form of Sancta Sophia in
+Constantinople. Dean Hart showed my companions and me what he calls
+his anti-tariff window. The window was purchased abroad, and the
+original tariff was to be ten per cent of the cost price. This would
+be about $75. The window cost $750. Meanwhile the McKinley tariff bill
+was passed by Congress, and as the duty was greatly increased he would
+not pay it. Finally the window was sold at auction by the customs'
+officials, and Dean Hart bought it for $25. As we rode about the city
+the courteous driver, a Mr. Haney, pointed out a beautiful house
+embowered in trees, which had a romantic history. A young man of
+Denver was engaged to be married to a young woman. She jilted him and
+married another, and while she was on her wedding tour her husband
+died. The house in which she lived was offered for sale at this
+juncture, and the original suitor bought it and turned her out into
+the street. He had his revenge, which shows that human nature is the
+same the world over. Had he offered her the house to live in, however,
+it would have been a nobler revenge, "overcoming evil with good."
+
+It is but a short ride from Denver to Colorado Springs, which is a
+delightful spot with 21,000 inhabitants, and here is a magnificent
+hotel a block or two from the railway station called the New Antlers.
+The Rev. Dr. H.H. Messenger, of Summit, Mississippi, an apostolic
+looking clergyman, with his wife, accompanied us from Denver to
+Colorado Springs, and also to Manitou, at the foot of Pike's Peak and
+the mouth of the Ute Pass. From Manitou we drove to the Garden of
+the Gods, comprising about five hundred acres, and went through this
+mysterious region with its fantastic and wonderful formations,
+which seem to caricature men and beasts and to mimic architectural
+creations. Here we saw the Scotchman, Punch and Judy, the Siamese
+Twins, the Lion, the elephant, the seal, the bear, the toad, and
+numerous other creatures. We also viewed the balanced rock, at the
+entrance, and the Gateway Cliffs, at the northeast end of the Garden,
+and the Cathedral spires. Everything was indeed startling, and as
+puzzling as the Sphinx in old Egypt. Nature was certainly in a playful
+mood when, with her chisel and mallet, she carved these grotesque
+forms out of stones and rocks.
+
+On the outskirts of Manitou the "Haunted House" was pointed out by
+the guide, who said that a man and his wife and their son had been
+murdered here. No one would live in the house now. He asked me if I
+believed in "Ghosts." I said I was not afraid of dead men, and that I
+did not think they came back to disturb us. He seemed to agree with
+me, but hastened to say that he "met a clergyman yesterday who said
+he believed in them." The house in Manitou which, of all others,
+interested me most, was the pretty vine-covered cottage of Helen Hunt
+Jackson, who wrote "Ramona." It was she, who, with a fine appreciation
+of nature, gave this wild and secluded spot, with its riddles in
+stone, the suggestive name of "The Garden of the Gods."
+
+At noon on Friday, October 7th, I boarded the Pullman train at
+Colorado Springs, on the Denver and Rio Grande Railway, for Salt Lake
+City. On this train was my old friend the Rev. James W. Ashton, Rector
+of St. Stephen's Church, Olean, N.Y., whom I had not seen for years,
+and from this hour he was my constant travelling companion for weeks
+in the California tour, ready for every enterprise and adventure. At
+Pueblo were some quaint Spanish-looking buildings, and farther on we
+were among the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Our train gradually
+ascended the heights skirting the bank of the Arkansas River, which
+was tawny and turbid for many a mile. But the Grand Cañon of the
+Arkansas, with its eight miles of granite walls and its Royal Gorge
+towering nearly three thousand feet above us! It is rightly named.
+I cannot undertake to describe it accurately. Here are grand cliffs
+which seemingly reach the heavens, and in some places the rocky walls
+come so near that they almost touch each other. As you look up, even
+in midday, the stars twinkle for you in the azure vault. As the train
+sped on, toiling up the pass through the riven hills and crossing a
+bridge fastened in the walls of the gorge and spanning the foaming
+waters, you felt as if you were shut up in the mysterious chambers of
+these eternal mountains. It is a stupendous work of the Creator, and
+man dwarfs into littleness in the presence of the majesty of God here
+manifested as when Elijah stood on Horeb's heights.
+
+It was a pleasant task to study the scenery, wild beyond description
+at times; and then you would pass upland plains with cattle here and
+there, and mining camps. That is Leadville, a mile or so yonder to
+the north; and the children who have come down to the station have
+valuable specimens of ore in their little baskets, to sell to you for
+a trifle. Off to the left hand, a little farther on, was a "placer
+mine," with water pouring out of a conduit, muddy and yellow with
+"washings." This emptied itself into the Arkansas River, which, from
+this point down to the foot of the mountains, was as if its bed had
+been stirred up with all its clay and other deposit. Above this
+junction the waters of the river were clear and sparkling. It is a
+picture of life, whose stream is pure and sweet until sin enters it
+and vitiates its current. Miles beyond are snow sheds, and the famous
+Tennessee Pass, 10,440 feet above the sea level. This is the great
+watershed of the Rocky Mountains, and two drops of water from a cloud
+falling here,--the one on the one side and the other on the other side
+of the Pass,--are separated forever. One runs to the Atlantic Ocean
+through rivers to the Gulf of Mexico, and the other to the Pacific
+Ocean. So there is the parting of the ways in human experience. There
+are the two ways, and the little turns of life determine your eternal
+destiny!
+
+Even after a night of travel through the mountains and across the
+Colorado Desert, we still, in the morning, find our train speeding on
+amid imposing hills, but now we are in Utah. This we entered at Utah
+Line. At length we cross the Pass of the Wahsatch Mountains at Soldier
+Summit, 7,465 feet above the sea, and some thirty miles farther west
+we enter the picturesque Utah Valley. At length we see the stream of
+the River Jordan, which is the connecting link between Utah Lake and
+the Great Salt Lake, and at last we find ourselves in the city founded
+by Brigham Young and his pioneer followers in 1847. There is a
+monument of the Mormon prophet in Salt Lake City, commemorating this
+founding. Standing on the hill above the present city and looking out
+on the great valley, with his left hand uplifted, he said: "Here we
+will found an empire!" And here to-day in this city, which bears his
+marks everywhere, is a population of 54,000 souls, two-thirds of whom
+profess the Mormon faith.
+
+Here we were met by Bishop Abiel Leonard, D.D., of Salt Lake, who was
+a most gracious host and who welcomed us with all the warmth of his
+heart. He had engaged accommodations for us at the Cullen House; and
+when I went to my room, I looked out on a courtyard bounded on one
+side by the rear end of a long block of stores. There I saw a wagon
+which had just been driven into the grounds. Two men were on the seat,
+the driver and another person, and seated on the floor of the wagon,
+with their backs toward me, were four women. They wore no hats, as the
+day was balmy, and I noticed that one had flaxen, another brown,
+and the two others dark hair. Seeing everything here with a Mormon
+colouring, I said, "This is a Mormon family. The Mormon farmer has
+come to town to give his four wives a holiday." It reminded me of
+similar groups which I had seen in old Cairo, on Fridays, when the
+Mohammedan went with his wives in the donkey cart to the Mosque. And
+is there not a strong resemblance between Mormon and Mohammedan? The
+Mormon husband alighted and gently and affectionately took up one of
+his wives and carried her into the adjoining store, then a second, and
+a third. My interest deepened as I watched the proceeding. I said to
+myself--"How devoted these Mormon husbands, if this is a true example,
+and how trusting the women!" When he took up the fourth wife to carry
+her in where her companions were, he turned her face toward me,
+so that I had a good view of her, and then, to my surprise, nay,
+amazement, I discovered that she had no feet! But quickly it dawned
+on my mind, that, instead of real, living Mormon wives, I had been
+looking on waxen figures, models for show windows! Well, are there not
+manikins in human life, unreal creatures, who never accomplish more
+than the models in the windows, who may be looked at, but who perform
+no noble and lasting deeds?
+
+Our sojourn in Salt Lake City gave ample time to visit the Great Salt
+Lake, eighty miles long and thirty miles wide, with two principal
+islands, Antelope and Stansbury; to make a complete study of the city,
+whose streets run at right angles to each other, with one street
+straight as an arrow and twenty miles long, and many of them bordered
+with poplar trees which, as has been facetiously said, were "popular"
+with Brigham Young; to attend the Saturday afternoon recital on the
+great organ, in the Tabernacle, which is oval in shape, and has a
+roof like a turtle's back, and where some three thousand people were
+assembled; to walk around Temple Square and examine the architecture
+of the Mormon Temple, which is like a great Cathedral, and into which
+no one is admitted but the specially initiated and privileged among
+the Latter-day Saints; to visit many buildings famous in Mormon
+history, and especially "Zion's Co-operative Mutual Institute," which,
+in its initials has been said wittily to mean, "Zion's Children
+Multiply Incessantly;" and on Sunday morning to attend the beautiful
+service in St. Mark's Church, where Bishop Tuttle, of Missouri,
+preached a striking sermon from the text "A horse is counted but a
+vain thing to save a man;" and in the evening to participate in the
+grand missionary service in Salt Lake Theatre, where the congregation
+was led by a choir of sixty voices, and stirring addresses were made
+by Bishop Leonard of Salt Lake, Bishop Gailor of Tennessee, Bishop
+Jacob, of Newcastle, England, Bishop Dudley, of Kentucky, and Bishop
+Tuttle, who was formerly Bishop here, before an audience of four
+thousand people, made up, as the Bishop said, of "Methodists,
+Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Hebrews, Latter-Day Saints and
+Churchmen."
+
+What I saw and heard here in Salt Lake City and in other parts of Utah
+would make a book of itself, but I may say that the only place in
+which to study Mormonism in all its workings is here in its seat.
+While polygamy must drop out of the system owing to the laws of the
+United States, the religious elements will not so soon perish. It
+has enough of Christianity in it to give it a certain stability like
+Mohammedanism; but we believe that the Church of the Living God
+will sooner or later triumph over all forms and teachings which are
+antagonistic to the Christian Creeds and Apostolic Order. I visited a
+Mormon bookstore, among other places, and I was amazed at the number
+of volumes which I found here on the religion of the Latter-Day
+Saints. In a history of Mormonism, which I opened, was this pregnant
+sentence--"The pernicious tendency of Luther's doctrine." Surely here
+is something for reflection!
+
+From Salt Lake City to Ogden, the great centre of railway travel,
+where several lines converge, is but a ride of thirty-six miles. Here
+the train, which was very heavy, was divided into two sections, and,
+after some delay, we went on our journey with hopeful hearts. The Salt
+Lake Valley and the Great Salt Lake, which we had traced for a long
+distance, finally disappeared from view. The journey was begun from
+Ogden on what is known as Pacific time. There are four time
+sections employed in the United States, adopted for convenience in
+1883,--Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific. It is Eastern time
+until you reach 82-1/2 degrees west longitude from Greenwich, Central
+time up to 97-1/2, Mountain time till you arrive at 11-1/2, Pacific
+time to 127-1/2, which will take you out into the Pacific Ocean;
+and there is just one hour's difference between each time section,
+covering fifteen degrees. So that when it is twelve o'clock, midday,
+in New York city, it is eleven in Chicago, ten o'clock in Denver,
+and nine o'clock in San Francisco. You adapt yourself, however, very
+readily to these changes of time, in your hours of sleep and in other
+matters.
+
+One of the places of special interest through which we passed before
+leaving Utah is Promontory. Here the last tie was laid and here the
+last spike was driven, on the 10th of May, 1869, when the Central
+Pacific and the Union Pacific Railways were united and the great
+cities of the Atlantic seaboard and San Francisco at the setting sun
+were brought into communication with each other by an iron way which
+has promoted our civilisation in a marked degree. A night ride over
+the Alkali Plains of Nevada, famous for their sage brush, was a
+novelty, and in the clear atmosphere they looked like fields of snow.
+
+At Wadsworth, where our train began to ascend the lower slopes of the
+Sierra Nevada Mountains, were several Piute Indians. They sell beads,
+blankets, baskets, and other mementoes. A papoose, all done up in
+swathing bands, aroused no little curiosity, and when some venturesome
+passenger with a kodak tried to take a picture of the infant, the
+mother quickly turned away. They think that the kodak is "the evil
+eye." There was an old squaw here with whom I conversed, who had a
+remarkable face on account of its wrinkled condition. She said her
+name was Marie Martile, and at first she said she was one hundred
+years old, and later that she was one hundred and fifty. At Reno I saw
+more Indians with papooses. The thought, however, that this old race
+is passing away like the fading leaf before the "pale face," is
+saddening. Soon we arrive in the El Dorado State, we are at last on
+California soil, and the train with panting engines climbs the dizzy
+heights of the Sierras, through beautiful forests, along the slopes
+of hills, through tunnels, beneath long snow sheds. These sheds are a
+striking feature, and are, with broken intervals, forty miles long.
+The scenery is remarkable, entirely different from that of the Rocky
+Mountains; and Donner Lake, into whose clear depths we look from lofty
+heights, recalls the terrible story of hardship, isolation, suffering
+and death, here in the winter of 1846 and 1847, when snow-fall on
+snow-fall cut the elder Donners and several members of this party off
+from the outside world, and they perished from cold and starvation.
+Oh, what a tragic, harrowing history it is!
+
+At Summit Station, the loftiest point of the pass over the Sierras,
+in the path of our railway, engines are changed, and while the train
+halts passengers amuse themselves by making snowballs. Then we begin
+the descent along the slopes of the mountains into the great valleys
+of California. Already we have passed from the region of perpetual
+snows to a milder clime. We begin to feel the tempered breezes from
+the Pacific fanning our cheeks. Yes, we are now in the land of a
+semi-tropical vegetation, a land of beauty and fertility, which in
+many respects resembles Palestine; and surely it is a Promised Land,
+rich in God's good gifts. Blue Cañon and Cape Horn and beautiful
+landscapes with vineyards and orange groves are passed, and as night
+with its sable pall descends upon us, we rest in peace with a feeling
+of satisfaction and thankfulness to Him Who has led us safely by the
+way thus far. When the train halted at Sacramento, I had a midnight
+view of it, and then we sped on to our destination. Some three weeks
+later, in company with Rev. Dr. Ashton, I visited the valley west of
+Sacramento, Suisun and Benicia, that I might not lose the view which
+night had obscured. The Carquinez Straits, with the railway ferryboat
+"Solano," the largest of its kind in the world, and the upper view of
+the great Bay of San Francisco, make a deep impression on the mind.
+I was well repaid for all my pains. But on that first night, as we
+hastened to our goal, amid landscapes of beauty and fruitfulness
+traversed in the olden days by the feet of pioneers and gold-seekers,
+it all seemed as if we were in fairyland. Will the dream be
+substantial when we enter the City by the Golden Gate?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+VIEWS FROM THE BOAT ON THE BAY
+
+Arrival at Oakland--"Ticket!"--On the Ferryboat--The City of "Live
+Oaks"--Mr. Young, a Citizen of Oakland--Distinguished Members of
+General Convention--Alameda--Berkeley and Its University--Picturesque
+Scenery--Yerba Buena, Alcatraz and Angel Islands--San Francisco at
+Last.
+
+
+It was on the morning of Wednesday, October the second, 1901, when
+I had my first view of that Queen City of the Pacific coast, San
+Francisco. Our train, fully nine hours late, in our journey from Salt
+Lake City, arrived at its destination on the great Oakland pier or
+mole at 2:30 A.M. The understanding with the conductor the evening
+before, as we were descending the Sierra Nevada Mountains, was that
+we would not be disturbed until day break. When the end of our long
+journey was reached I was oblivious to the world of matter in midnight
+slumber; but as soon as the wheels of the sleeping coach had ceased to
+revolve I was aroused with the cry, "Ticket!" First I thought I was
+dreaming, as I had heard the phrase, "Show your tickets," so often;
+but the light of "a lantern dimly burning" and a stalwart figure
+standing before the curtains of my sleeping berth, soon convinced
+me that I was in a world of reality. This, I may say, was my only
+experience of the kind, in all my travelling over the Southern Pacific
+Railway, the Sante Fé, and the Mexican International and Mexican
+Central Railways. There was little sleep after the interruption; and
+when the morning came with its interest and novelty I was ready to
+proceed across the Bay of San Francisco. Our faithful porter, John
+Williams, whose name is worthy of mention in these pages, as I stepped
+from the Pullman car, said, "Good-bye, Colonel!" He always addressed
+me as "Colonel." The porters on all the western roads and on the
+Mexican railways are polite and obliging, and a word of commendation
+must be said for them as a class.
+
+The Rev. Dr. James W. Ashton, of Olean, N.Y., my fellow-traveller, and
+I were soon in the ferry house. We ascended a wide staircase and then
+found ourselves in a large waiting room, through whose windows I
+looked out on the Bay of San Francisco for the first time. Off in the
+distance, in the morning light, I could catch a glimpse of the Golden
+City of the West. Near by was a departing ferryboat bound for San
+Francisco. Just then a young man, evidently a stranger, accompanied by
+a young woman, apparently a bride, accosted me and asked the question,
+"Sir, do you think we can get on from up here?" Looking at the
+bay-steamer fast receding, I assured him, somewhat pensively, that I
+thought we could. In a few moments another steamer appeared in view
+and speedily entered the dock. The gates of the ferry house were
+opened and we went on board at once. Most of the passengers at this
+early hour were those who had come across the Sierras, but there were
+a few persons from Oakland going over to their places of business in
+San Francisco. Oakland, so named from the abundance of its live-oaks,
+has been styled the "Brooklyn" of San Francisco. It is largely a place
+of residence for business men, and from fifteen to twenty thousand
+cross the Bay daily in pursuit of their avocations. It is pleasantly
+situated on the east side of the Bay, gradually rising up to the
+terraced hills which skirt it on the east. The streets are regularly
+laid out and lined with shade trees of tropical luxuriance as well as
+the live-oaks. Pretty lawns, green and well kept, are in front of many
+of the houses in the residence part of the city, and here the eye has
+a continual feast in gazing on flowers in bloom, fuschias, verbenas,
+geraniums and roses especially. At a later day I visited Oakland, and
+found it just as beautiful and attractive as it looked in the distance
+from the deck of the ferry boat. It has several banks, numerous
+churches, five of our own faith, with some twelve hundred
+communicants, also good schools, and some fine business blocks.
+Trolley cars conduct you through its main streets in all directions.
+Landing at the Oakland pier, one of the largest in the world, and
+extending out into the Bay some two miles from the shore, the Southern
+Pacific Railway will soon carry you to the station within the city
+limits. As you wander hither and thither you see on all sides tokens
+of prosperity. There is an air of refinement about the place, and you
+find the atmosphere clear and stimulating. There is not a very marked
+difference in the temperature of the climate between summer and
+winter. Frosts are unknown. It is no disparagement to San Francisco
+to say that Oakland for delicate persons is more desirable. The trade
+winds as they blow from the Pacific ocean, and make one robust and
+hardy in San Francisco, when there is vitality to resist them, are
+tempered as they blow across the Bay some fourteen miles or more,
+while the fogs, so noted, as they rush in through the Golden Gate and
+speed onward, are greatly modified as they reach the further shore. As
+it has such a splendid climate and natural advantages, and enjoys the
+distinction of being at the terminus of the great overland railway
+systems, it is constantly attracting to itself population and capital.
+Ten years ago it had 48,682 inhabitants; to-day it numbers 66,960.
+
+Its people are very hospitable and are glad to welcome the traveller
+from the east to their comfortable homes. On the ferry boat I was
+accosted by a ruddy-faced and genial gentleman, a Mr. Young, a
+resident of Oakland, who was proceeding to his place of business in
+San Francisco. He gave me some valuable information, and pointed out
+objects and places of interest. He seemed to be well informed about
+the General Convention appointed to meet on the day of my arrival, in
+Trinity church, San Francisco. He spoke with intelligence about its
+character and purpose, and with enthusiasm concerning its members whom
+he had met as they were crossing the Bay. The names of Bishop Doane,
+of Albany, Bishop Potter, of New York, and Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan,
+were as household words on his lips, and there was a gleam of delight
+in his eye as he pictured to us the pleasures and surprises in store
+for us during our sojourn in the Capital of the Golden West.
+
+"That town," said he, "which you see to the south of Oakland, with
+its long mole, is Alameda. It is a great place of resort, a kind of
+pleasure grove. Alameda in the Spanish language means 'Poplar Avenue.'
+Many people go there on excursions and picnic parties from San
+Francisco, and other places along the Bay. It is, as you see, a very
+pretty spot. In time it will become a part of Oakland. It has to-day
+a population of over sixteen thousand people." When I asked him if it
+had an Episcopal Church, he said, "Yes. Its name is Christ Church, and
+there are in it four hundred communicants. Do you know its rector?
+He is the Rev. Thomas James Lacey." Mr. Young, who was a native of
+Massachusetts and just as proud of California as he was of his old
+home in the east, turned with considerable elation to Berkeley,
+the University town. "There," said he, "to the north of Oakland is
+Berkeley, with a population of thirteen thousand. It is, as you see,
+situated at the foot of the San Pablo hills, and is about eleven miles
+from the Market street ferry in San Francisco. To reach it you go
+by ferry to the Oakland pier and then take the cars on the Southern
+Pacific road." As I gazed northward, there, as a right arm of Oakland,
+was the classic town with its aristocratic name, nestling at the foot
+of the hills in the midst of trees and flowers. It was like a dainty
+picture with the Bay in the foreground. A nearer view or a visit to it
+brings the traveller into line with the Golden Gate, through which his
+eye wanders straight out into the Pacific ocean with all its mystery
+and grandeur. The University of California was organised by an act
+of the Legislature in 1868. A law passed then set apart for its work
+$200,000, proceeds from the sale of tide lands. To this endowment was
+added the sum of $100,000, from a "Seminary and Public Building Fund."
+There was also applied to the new university another fund of $120,000,
+realised from the old college of California, which had been organised
+in 1855. Then by an act of Congress appropriating 150,000 acres of
+land for an Agricultural College, which is a part of the equipment of
+the University, it became still richer. It embraces 250 acres
+within the area of its beautiful grounds, and so has ample room for
+expansion. It has departments of Letters, Science, Agriculture,
+Mechanics, Engineering, Chemistry, Mining, Medicine, Dentistry,
+Pharmacy, Astronomy and Law. The famous Lick Observatory, stationed
+on Mount Hamilton near San Jose, is a part of the institution. It has
+prospered greatly under its present efficient President, Benjamin Ide
+Wheeler, LL.D.; and it now has three hundred instructors, with over
+three thousand students. Tuition is free to all students except in the
+professional departments. It has a splendid library of seventy-three
+thousand volumes. It will be readily seen that with such an
+institution of learning, and with the Leland Stanford Jr. University,
+at Palo Alto, the State of California is giving diligent attention to
+matters of education. While also there are the various schools and
+academies and seminaries of the different denominations, it may be
+said that the church is not backward in this respect. St. Margaret's
+School for girls, and St. Matthew's School for boys, as well as the
+Church Divinity School of the Pacific, at San Mateo, where Bishop
+Nichols resides, and the Irving Institute for girls, and Trinity
+School in San Francisco, are an evidence of what she is doing for
+the welfare of the people intellectually, aside from her spiritual
+ministrations in the dioceses of California and Los Angeles and the
+Missionary Jurisdiction of Sacramento. Mr. Young was forward to
+mention the fact that in Berkeley there is the large and influential
+parish of Saint Mark with a list of nearly four hundred communicants;
+and this is a great factor for good in the life of such a unique
+University town. As my eyes turned away from Berkeley, I naturally
+recalled the great Bishop of Cloyne, after whom the place is named;
+and as I took into view the wider range of the coast lands, and the
+blue waters of the magnificent Bay, some fifty miles in length, and,
+on an average, eight miles wide, and reflected on the significance
+which attaches to this favoured region, and the influences which
+go out from this seat of power, and fountain head of riches, I
+instinctively recalled the noble lines which the eighteenth century
+prophet wrote when he mused, "On the Prospect of Planting Arts and
+Learning in America:"
+
+  "Westward the course of empire takes its way;
+    The four first acts already past,
+  A fifth shall close the drama with the day:
+    Time's noblest offspring is the last."
+
+East of us, in picturesqueness, as in a panorama spread out, were the
+counties of Alameda and Contra Costa, with their receding hills, and
+Mount Diablo, 3,855 feet in height, lifting up its head proudly.
+Farther to the south was the rich and beautiful valley of Santa Clara,
+with its orchards and vineyards. On the west across the Bay were the
+counties of San Mateo, and San Francisco, with their teeming life,
+covering a Peninsula twenty-six miles long, and extending up to the
+Golden Gate; while off to the north, and bordering on the ocean was
+Marin in its grandeur, crowned with Tamalpais, 2,606 feet above the
+sea;--and skirting San Pablo Bay was Sonoma with its vine-clad vale.
+There were the islands of the Bay also, which attracted our attention.
+Not far from the Oakland pier is Goat Island rising to the height of
+340 feet out of the waters, and consisting of 300 acres. It was brown
+on that October morning when I first saw it, but when the rains come
+with refreshment in November the islands and all the surrounding
+country are invested with a robe of emerald green, and flowers spring
+up to gladden the eyes. Goat Island was so named because goats which
+were brought in ships from southern ports to San Francisco, for fresh
+meat, were turned loose here for pasturage for a time; and as these
+creatures multiplied the island took their name. But it formerly bore
+the more euphonious title, Yerba Buena, which means in Spanish
+"Good Herbs." Later in my journeyings to and fro I overheard a lady
+instructing another person as to the proper way in which to pronounce
+it, and she made sad work of it. She gave the "B" the sound of the
+letter G. It also had another name, as you may learn from an old
+Spanish map of Miguel Costanso, where it is called--Ysla de Mal
+Abrigo, which means that it afforded poor shelter. It is a government
+possession, as also the other islands, Alcatraz and Angel. Alcatraz,
+which Costanso styles, White Island, is smaller than Yerba Buena. In
+its greatest elevation it is 135 feet above the Bay, and it embraces
+in its surface about thirty-five acres, about the same area as the
+Haram Esh-Sherîf, or sacred enclosure of the Temple Hill in Jerusalem,
+with the Mosque of Omar and the Mosque el-Aksa. On its top is a
+lighthouse, which, on a clear night, sailors can see twelve miles
+outside of the Golden Gate. Nature, with her wise forethought, seems
+indeed to have formed this island opposite the Golden Gate, far
+inside, in the Bay, as a sentinel to watch that pass into the Pacific,
+and to guide the returning voyager after his perilous journeyings to
+safe moorings in a land-locked haven. Farther to the north is Ysla de
+los Angeles, Angel Island, with a varied landscape of hill and plain,
+comprising some 800 acres of land.
+
+Here are natural springs of water, and in the early days it was well
+wooded with live-oak trees. To the eyes of Drake and other early
+navigators and explorers it must have been a vision of beauty, lifting
+itself out of the waters. Not many trees are seen here now, however,
+but you may behold instead in harvest time fields of grain. It is
+especially noted for its stone quarries, and out of these were taken
+the materials for the fortifications of Alcatraz and Fort Point--as
+well as the California bank building. It was my privilege at a later
+day, in company with many of the members of the General Convention
+to sail over the Bay and around these islands, which one can never
+forget. The steamer "Berkeley" was courteously placed at the service
+of the members of the Convention by the officers of the Southern
+Pacific Railway; and it was indeed a most enjoyable afternoon under
+clear and balmy skies as we rode along the shores of the Peninsula,
+and up the eastern side of the Bay, and northward towards San Pablo,
+and then around Angel Island and Alcatraz strongly fortified, a
+distance altogether of forty miles. But now on the first morning,
+veiled partly with clouds, San Francisco rises on the view, that city
+of so many memories by the waters of the Pacific, where many a one has
+been wrecked in body and soul as well as in fortune, while others have
+grown rich and have led useful lives. Yes, it is San Francisco at
+last! And while it looms upon the view with its varied landscape, its
+hills and towered buildings, I am reminded of another October morning
+when I first saw Constantinople, when old Stamboul with its Seraglio
+Point, and Galata with its tower, and Pera on the heights above,
+and Yildiz to the east, and Scutari across the Bosphorus, all were
+revealed gradually as the mists rolled away. So the Golden City of
+the West is disclosed to view as the shadows disappear and the clouds
+break and flee away and the morning sun hastening across the lofty
+Sierras gilds the homes of the rich and poor alike, and bathes water
+and land in beauty. There is another city on the shore of a tideless
+sea, and it will be the joyful morning of eternal life, when, earthly
+journeys ended, we walk over its golden streets!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+SAN FRANCISCO AND THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD
+
+San Francisco--Her Hills--Her Landscapes--Population of Different
+Decades--The Flag on the Plaza in 1846--Yerba Buena its Earliest
+Name--First Englishman and First American to Build Here--The Palace
+Hotel--The Story of the Discovery of. Gold in 1848--Sutter and
+Marshall--The News Spread Abroad--Multitudes Flock to the Gold
+Mines--San Francisco in 1849.
+
+
+As we stand on the deck of the bay steamer and are fast approaching
+the San Francisco ferry-house which looms up before us in dignity, we
+look out on a great city with a population of 350,000 souls, and we
+observe that it is seated on hills as well as on lowlands. Rome loved
+her hills, Corinth had her Acropolis, and Athens, rising out of the
+Plain of Attica, was not content until she had crowned Mars' Hill with
+altars and her Acropolis with her Parthenon. Here in this golden
+city of the Pacific the houses are climbing the hills, nay they have
+climbed them already and they vie in stateliness with palaces and
+citadels in the old historic places which give picturesqueness to the
+coast lands of the Mediterranean. There is indeed in the aspect of San
+Francisco, in her waters and her skies, and all her surroundings, that
+which recalls to my mind landscapes and scenery of Italy and Greece
+and old Syria. Yonder to the northeast of the city is Telegraph Hill,
+294 feet high, a spot which in the olden days, that is, as far back
+only as 1849, was wooded. Now it is teeming with life, and it looks
+down with seeming satisfaction on miles and miles of streets and
+warehouses and dwellings of rich and poor. But there are not many poor
+people in this Queen City. In all my wanderings about the city for a
+month, I was never accosted by a professional beggar. Everybody could
+find work to do, and all seemed prosperous and happy. Off to the
+west, serving as a sentinel, is Russian Hill, 360 feet high. It is
+a striking feature in the ever-expanding city, and it is a notable
+landmark for the San Franciscan. In the southeastern part of the city
+is Rincon Hill, 120 feet in height, attracting to itself the interest
+of that part of the population whose homes are in its shadow. There
+are other hills of lesser importance as to altitude, but over their
+tops extend long streets and broad avenues lined with the dwellings of
+a contented and thrifty people. The business blocks and hotels, the
+printing houses and railway and steamship offices, the stores and art
+galleries, the places of amusement and lecture halls, the stores and
+shops, the homes and the churches, fill all the spaces between those
+hills in a compact manner and run around them and stretch beyond them,
+and at your feet, as you stand on an eminence, is a panorama of life
+which at once arrests your attention and enchains your mind. It was
+all so different fifty or sixty years ago. According to the census
+returns the population of San Francisco in 1850 was 34,000. In 1860
+there was a gain of 22,802. In 1870 there were in the city 149,473
+souls; while in 1880 there was a population of 233,959 including
+30,000 Chinese. The census of 1890 gives an increase of 64,038 during
+the decade, and the last enumeration shows that there has been a gain
+of 44,785 in the ten years. If the towns across the bay and northward,
+as well as San Mateo on the south, which are as much a part of San
+Francisco as Brooklyn and Staten Island are of New York, there would
+be a population of more than 450,000. The growth, as will be seen, is
+steady, and San Francisco offers to such as seek a home within her
+borders, all the refinements and comforts of life, all that ministers
+to the intellect and the spiritual side of our nature as well as our
+social tastes and desires.
+
+There can be no greater contrast imaginable than that between the San
+Francisco of 1846, when Commodore Montgomery, of the United States
+sloop of war _Portsmouth_, raised the American flag over it, and the
+noble city of to-day. And no one then in the band of marines who stood
+on the Plaza as the flag was unfurled to the breeze by the waters of
+the Pacific, in sight of the great bay, could have dreamed of the
+golden future which was awaiting California--of the splendour which
+would rest on little Yerba Buena in the lapse of time. Yerba Buena was
+the early name of the settlement. This was applied also, as we have
+learned, to Goat Island. The pueblo was then insignificant and
+apparently with no prospect of expansion or grandeur. There were only
+a few houses there, chiefly of adobe construction, clustering about
+the Plaza. The Presidio, west of the stray hamlet, and the Mission
+Dolores, to the southwest, were all that relieved a dreary landscape
+beyond. There were the hills covered with chaparral and the shifting
+sands all around, and far to the south, where now are wide streets and
+great blocks of buildings. The ground sloped towards the bay on the
+east, and a cove, long since filled in, which bore the name of Yerba
+Buena, extended up to Montgomery street. The population of the town
+was less than a hundred; there was hardly this number in the Presidio,
+and not more than two hundred people were connected with the Mission
+Dolores. In 1835 Captain William A. Richardson, an Englishman, the
+first foreigner to enter the embryo town, erected a tent for his
+residence; and on July 4th, 1836, the second house was built at the
+corner of Clay and Dupont streets. The story runs that the first
+American to build a house in San Francisco proper was Daniel Culwer,
+who also founded Santa Barbara. This pioneer was born in Maryland in
+1793, and died in California in 1857. He lived long enough to see the
+greatness of the city assured. But on that day when he finished his
+modest house on the corner of New Montgomery and Market streets, he
+little thought that in after years there would spring up, as if
+by magic, under the skillful hands of the Lelands, famous in San
+Francisco as in Saratoga in the olden days, the magnificent Palace
+Hotel, with its royal court, its great dining halls, and its seven
+hundred and fifty-five rooms for guests, rivalling in its grandeur and
+its luxurious appointments the palaces of kings.
+
+The growth of San Francisco was very rapid after the discovery of
+gold. The population immediately leaped into the thousands. California
+was the goal of the gold-seeker, the El Dorado of his quest. Men in
+search of fortune came from all parts of the world to the Golden West.
+It was on the 19th of January, 1848, that gold was discovered. The
+story reads like a romance. Captain John Augustus Sutter, who was born
+in Baden, Germany, February 15th, 1803, after many adventures in New
+York, Missouri, New Mexico, the Sandwich Islands, and Sitka, at last
+found himself in San Francisco. From this spot he crossed the bay and
+went up the Sacramento River, where he built a stockade, known as
+Sutter's Fort, and erected a saw mill at a cost of $10,000, and a
+flour mill at an outlay of $25,000. Here in 1847 he was joined by
+James Wilson Marshall, born in New Jersey in 1812. Marshall was sent
+up to the North Fork of the American River, where at Coloma he built a
+saw mill. This was near the center of El Dorado county, and in a line
+northeast from San Francisco. The mill, in the midst of a lumber
+region, was finished on January 15th, 1848, and everything was in
+readiness for the sawing of timber, which was in great demand in all
+the coast towns and brought a high price. The mill-race, when the
+water was let into it, was found too shallow, and in order to deepen
+it Marshall opened the flood gates and allowed a strong, steady
+volume of water to flow through it all night. Nature, aided by human
+sagacity, having done her work well, the flood gates were closed, and
+there in the gravel beneath the shallow stream lay several yellow
+objects like pebbles. They aroused curiosity. The miller took one and
+hammered it on a stone. He found it was gold. He then gave one of
+the "yellow pebbles" to a Mrs. Wimmer, of his camp, to be boiled in
+saleratus water. She threw it into a kettle of boiling soap, and after
+several hours it came out bright and shining. It is yellow gold,
+California gold, there can be no mistake! Next, we see Marshall, all
+excitement, hastening to Sutter's Fort, and informing his employer, in
+a mysterious way, that he has found gold. Sutter goes to the mill the
+next day, and Marshall is impatiently waiting for him. More water
+is turned on, and the race is ploughed deeper, and more nuggets are
+brought to light. It is a day of supreme joy. The excitement is great.
+Even the waters of the American River seem to "clap their hands" and
+the trees of the wood wave their tops in homage and rejoice. At the
+foot of the Sierras is the hidden treasure, which will thrill the
+civilised world when it hears the tidings with a new joy, which will
+bring delight beyond measure to thousands of adventurers, which will
+enrich some beyond their wildest dreams, and which will prove the ruin
+of many an one, wrecking, alas! both soul and body. Sutler's plan was
+to keep the wonderful discovery a secret, but this was impossible.
+Even the very birds of the air would carry the news afar to the coast
+in their songs; the waters of mountain streams running down to the
+Sacramento River and on to San Francisco Bay and out to the Pacific
+Ocean through the Golden Gate would bear the report north and south to
+all the cities and towns, to Central and South America, to China and
+Japan, to Europe and more distant lands; and the wings of the wind
+would serve as couriers to waft the story across the Sierras and the
+Rocky Mountains and the plains, till the whole world would be startled
+and gladdened with the cry, Gold is found, gold in California! One of
+the women of Sutler's household told the secret, which was too big to
+be kept in hiding, to a teamster, and he, overjoyed, in turn told it
+to Merchant Smith and Merchant Brannan of the Fort. The "secret" was
+out in brief space, and like an eagle with outspread wings, it flew
+away into all quarters of the globe. Poor Sutter, strange to say,
+it ruined him. The gold seekers came from the ends of the earth and
+"squatted" on his lands, and he spent all the fortune he had amassed
+in trying to dispossess them. But his efforts were unavailing. The
+laws, loosely administered then, seemed to be against him, and fate,
+relentless fate, spared him not. Almost all that was left to him in
+the end was the ring which he had made out of the lumps of the first
+gold found, and on which was inscribed this legend: "The first gold
+found in California, January, 1848." It tells a melancholy as well as
+a joyous tale, in it are bound up histories and tragedies, in it the
+happiness of multitudes, and even the fate of immortal souls! The
+California legislature at length took pity on Sutter, and granted him
+a pension of $250 per month, on which he lived until he was summoned,
+at Washington, D.C., on June 17th, 1880, by the Angel of Death, to a
+land whose gold mocks us not, and where everyone's "claim" is good,
+if he be found worthy to pass through the Golden Gate. Marshall, too,
+died a poor man, August 8th, 1885, having lived on a pension from the
+State of California, which also has seen fit to honour his memory, as
+the discoverer of gold, by erecting a monument to him at Coloma, the
+scene of the most exciting events in his life. The names of these two
+men, however, will endure in the thrilling histories of 1848 and 1849,
+as long as time lasts--for all unconsciously they set the civilised
+world in motion, gave new impulse to armies of men, spread sails on
+the ocean, filled coffers with yellow gold, and added new chapters to
+the graphic history of San Francisco and many another city. When the
+tidings of the discovery of gold reached the outside world thousands
+on thousands set their faces towards the El Dorado of the Pacific
+slopes. There were many new Jasons. The Golden Fleece of the sunny
+West was beckoning them on. New Argos were fitted out for the new
+Colchis. The Argonauts of 1849 were willing to brave all dangers. It
+is Joaquin Miller who sings--
+
+       "Full were they
+  Of great endeavour. Brave and true
+  As stern Crusader clad in steel,
+  They died afield as it was fit--
+  Made strong with hope, they dared to do
+  Achievement that a host to-day
+  Would stagger at, stand back and reel,
+  Defeated at the thought of it."
+
+There were three ways of reaching the gold fields. Men could travel
+across the plains in the traditional emigrant wagon. It was a weary,
+lonely journey, life was endangered among hostile Indians, and happy
+were those who at last were strong enough to toil in the mines. Alas,
+too many fell by the way and left their bones to bleach in arid
+regions. It is the experience of life. We have our object of desire.
+We often come short of it. Ere we reach the goal we perish and the
+coveted prize is forever lost. Not so is it to him who seeks the Gold
+of New Jerusalem. The Gold of that land is good, and all who will can
+find it and enjoy it.
+
+Another way was by the Isthmus of Panama, and then up the coast in
+such a ship as one could find. It was the least toilsome journey and
+the shortest, but still attended with hardships. Many fell a prey to
+wasting fevers which burn out one's life, and so never reached the
+destined port of San Francisco, through which they would pass to the
+gold fields.
+
+The longest way was around Cape Horn. Still there were those who took
+it, even if months, five or six, it might be, were consumed in the
+journey. The gold they sought would compensate them at last. These too
+had to encounter storms, face probable shipwreck or contend with grim
+death. Many who sold all to equip themselves, who turned away from
+home and kindred, for a time they thought, to enrich themselves, who
+would surely return to their loved ones with untold treasure, never
+fulfilled their desire. Some perished in the voyage, others died
+in San Francisco, and were laid to rest till the final day in her
+cemeteries by the heaving ocean. Such as reached the mines did
+not always gain the gold they coveted. There were those who were
+fortunate, who made a success of life, who realised their day dreams;
+and some of these returned to the old home, to the waiting parents,
+to the longing wife and children. Some with their gold settled in San
+Francisco and sent for their kindred. And what happy meetings were
+those in the years of gold mining, when ships coming from many lands,
+from American and foreign ports, brought to the city through the
+Golden Gate the beloved ones whose dear faces had ever been an
+inspiration to the toilers in darkest hours! Methinks the meetings
+of loved ones parted here, on the shores of the crystal sea, will
+compensate for all life's labours and trials. Yes, if we only have the
+true treasures, the true gold of the Golden City.
+
+In those days of 1848 and 1849 and during 1850 and 1851, San
+Francisco--on which we are now looking, the stately, comely city of
+to-day, was a city of tents in a large measure. Ships were pouring out
+their passengers at the Long Wharf. They would tent for a time on the
+shore, then hurry off to the mines. In those days you could meet in
+the streets men of various nationalities. Here were gold seekers from
+New England and old England, from our own Southland and the sunny land
+of France and Italy, from Germany and Sweden and Norway, from Canada
+and other British possessions, from China and Japan. And it was gold
+which brought them all here, the statesman and the soldier, the
+labouring man and the child of fortune, sons of adversity and sons
+of prosperity, rich and poor, lawyers, doctors, merchants, sailors,
+scholars, unlettered,--all are here for gold. Such is the San
+Francisco of those early days. It is a romance of reality, of the
+Golden West!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE STORY OF GOLDEN GATE PARK AND THE CEMETERIES
+
+St. Andrew's Brotherhood--Patras--The Cross at Megara and the
+Golden Gate--Portsmouth Square and its Life--Other City Squares
+and Parks--Golden Gate Park, its Beauty, Objects and Places of
+Interest--Prayer Book Cross--Chance Visitors--Logan the Guide--First
+View of the Pacific Ocean--"Thy Way is in the Sea"--The Cemeteries of
+San Francisco--World-wide Sentiment--Group Around Lone Mountain--Story
+of the Graves--Earth's Ministries--Lesson of the Heavens.
+
+
+When my companion Ashton and I landed at the Market Street Ferry
+House, an imposing structure of two stories, with a wide hall on the
+second floor and offices and bureaus of information on either side,
+our newfound friend, Mr. Young, bade us a "Good-by" with a hearty
+handshake, hoping he might meet us again. Before leaving us, however,
+he introduced us to a young man a member of the Brotherhood of St.
+Andrew, who took us to the temporary office of the Society in the
+Ferry House, and gave us necessary directions about the street cars,
+hotels and churches. We were in a strange city on the western shore
+of the Continent, yet, we felt at home at once through the cordial
+greeting of the Brotherhood. The St. Andrew's Cross, which our young
+guide wore on his coat, was indeed a friendly token. It spoke volumes
+to the heart; and I was carried back in memory to that early morning,
+when, having sailed over Ionian Seas, our good ship cast anchor in the
+Bay of Patras, and my feet pressed the soil which had been consecrated
+by the blood of the Saint, whose cross was now a token of good will
+and welcome at the ends of the earth. I could not but recall besides a
+memorable incident in connection with the Saint Andrew's Cross. We had
+passed the Isthmus of Corinth, and our train halted for a space at
+Megara, a town of six or seven thousand people, where is the bluest
+blood in all Greece; and as I alighted from my coach on the Athens and
+Peloponnesus Railway, I saw, some twenty rods away, a Greek Papa or
+Priest, who made a splendid figure. An impulse came over me to speak
+to him, and I knew there was one sign which he would recognise and
+understand. It was the Saint Andrew's Cross, which I made by crossing
+my arms. He immediately came to me and we conversed briefly as the
+time would permit, in the old language of Homer and Plato, which all
+patriotic Greeks love. He asked me if I was a Papa, and was pleased
+when I said, "Yes." I introduced him to my companions in the coach,
+and he greeted them warmly; and as the train began to move on we bade
+each other farewell. We may never meet again, but the Cross of Saint
+Andrew was a bond between us, and we felt that we were brethren in
+one Lord, Saint Andrew's Divine Master and ours. So the sight of that
+Cross there by the Pacific, with all its history of faith and love and
+martyrdom, caused our hearts to beat in unison with our brethren by
+the Golden Gate. I thought then it would be a special advantage to
+strangers in strange cities, if in some way the Brotherhood could
+serve as a Bureau of Information to travellers, who understand the
+meaning of the Cross. It would not be a matter of large expense after
+all if Chapters in large centres would extend greeting to men and
+women who are journeying hither and thither and who often stand in
+need of just such services as the Brotherhood could give. In a few
+hours after our arrival we were ready for the opening service of the
+General Convention, in Trinity Church, on Gough street at the corner
+of Bush street.
+
+At intervals when duty would permit we made a study of San Francisco
+and its life, rich in scene and incident, and most instructive as well
+as attractive. Some of the noticeable features of the city are its
+parks and squares. In the northern part or section, Washington and
+Lobos Squares greet you, while Pioneer Park adorns Telegraph Hill,
+and Portsmouth Square or the Plaza is just east of the famous Chinese
+restaurant and close by police headquarters. This last was famous in
+the early days as the centre of Yerba Buena, and here the American
+flag was raised for the first time when our marines under Commodore
+Montgomery took possession of the town. Indeed some of the most
+exciting scenes in the early history of San Francisco were witnessed
+in this locality. Volumes might be written about its Spanish and
+Mexican families, its adobe buildings, its gambling places, its haunts
+of vice, its public assemblies, its crowds of men from all lands, its
+social and civic histories.
+
+But all this is of the past, and it seems like a dream of by-gone
+days. When I visited it on two occasions, in company with friends, it
+was a quiet place enough; and the casual observer could never have
+thought or realised that around this romantic spot fortunes made by
+hard toil of weary months and years had been lost in a few short hours
+in the saloon and gambling places for which the vicinity was noted,
+that the worst passions of the human heart had been exhibited here,
+and that betimes amid the laughter of the merry throng in midnight
+revelry and above the strains of the "harp and viol" one could have
+heard the voices of blasphemy and the sharp, loud reports of pistols
+in the hands of careless characters, whose deadly bullets had sent
+many a poor unfortunate wayfarer or unwary miner from the gold fields
+to his long home.
+
+If, in your saunterings, you go through the central part of the city
+you will find Lafayette Square, Alta Plaza, Hamilton Square, Columbia
+Square, and Franklin and Jackson Parks, at varying distances from each
+other and affording variety to the tourist. In the south section you
+will see Buena Vista Park and Garfield Square, while to the west you
+have Hill Park and Golden Gate Park. The Golden Gate Park is now
+famous the world over and vies in beauty and splendour with Central
+Park in New York, nay, in some respects surpasses this, in that it has
+a magnificent frontage on the Pacific ocean, a long coast view and a
+wide range of sea with the Farallone Islands, about twenty miles off
+in the foreground of the picture, and visible on a clear day always,
+and most enchanting in the sunset hour as we gazed on them. The Golden
+Gate Park dates back only to the year 1870, when the California
+Legislature passed an act providing for the improvement of public
+parks in San Francisco. At that time this lonely spot, now so like a
+dream of fairy land, was but a waste, a wide stretch of sand dunes
+among which the winds of the ocean played hide and seek. Its
+entrances, with a wide avenue in the foreground running north and
+south, are some five miles from the Market Street Ferry. The afternoon
+that my friend Ashton and I visited it was clear and balmy. Just as we
+were entering the park carriage I was greeted by a young friend from
+the East, whom I had not seen for years; and then, more than three
+thousand miles away from home, I realised how small our planet is
+after all. As we rode along the flowery avenues with green lawns
+stretching out on either hand and losing themselves in groups of
+stately trees and hedges of shrubs and Monterey Cypress we were filled
+with delight. We could see the birds, native and foreign, flying from
+branch to branch of trees which grew within their gigantic cages, and
+occasionally we heard the notes of some songster. Yonder, too, we saw
+deer browsing, and elk and antelope. There also were the buffalo and
+the grizzly bear; and apparently all forgot that, shut in as they
+were in wide enclosures, they were in captivity. We could not fail to
+observe the bright flower-beds on every hand, the pleasant groves, the
+shady walks, the grottoes of wild design, the woodland retreats, the
+sylvan bowers. The park, we were told by our communicative driver,
+John Carter, comprises ten hundred and forty acres of ground. He also
+pointed out various places and objects of interest. The Museum, by the
+wayside, in its Egyptian architecture, is like one of the old temples
+of the Pharaohs on the banks of the Nile.
+
+You are carried into the realm of immortal song when you gaze on the
+busts of Goethe and Schiller, and your patriotism is stirred afresh
+as you behold the monument of Francis Scott Key, author of the
+Star-Spangled Banner. The Muses also have their abode here on the
+colonnaded Music Stand or Pavilion erected by Claus Spreckles at a
+cost of $80,000. Another interesting feature is the Japanese Tea
+Garden. Then there is the well equipped Observatory on Strawberry Hill
+from which you can look far out to sea, and where star-gazers can
+study celestial scenery as the Heavens declare God's glory. Seven
+lakelets give charm to the landscape, but the eye is never weary in
+looking on Stone Lake, a mile and a quarter in circuit, beautiful
+with its clear waters, its shelving shores, its bays and miniature
+headlands, while on its calm bosom, ducks of rich plumage and
+Australian swans are disporting themselves.
+
+That, however, which attracted our attention most of all was the great
+grey stone cross on the crest of the highest point of the Golden Gate
+Park. This, chiseled after the fashion of the old crosses of lona and
+linked with the name of St. Columba, is the monument erected by the
+late George W. Childs, of Philadelphia, Pa., to commemorate the first
+use of the Book of Common Prayer on the Pacific coast, when, in 1579,
+under Admiral Drake, Chaplain Fletcher read Prayers in this vicinity,
+either in San Francisco Bay, or a little further north in what is
+called Drake's Bay. But more of this anon. As we walked from the
+carriage road, beneath some spreading trees, to get a nearer view of
+the Prayer Book Cross, numerous partridges were moving about, without
+fear, in our pathway; and had we been minded to frighten them or
+do them harm we would have been restrained by yonder symbol of our
+redemption, which teaches us ever to be tender and humane towards bird
+and beast and all others of God's helpless creatures. The Prayer
+Book Cross is seen from afar. It looks down on the city with its
+innumerable homes, on the cemeteries within its shadow, on the
+Presidio with its tents and munitions of war, on the Golden Gate and
+on the waters of the Pacific, and it brings a blessing to all with its
+message of love and peace. It is a guide too, to the sailor coming
+over the seas from distant lands. As he strains his eyes to catch a
+glimpse of the coast the Cross stands out in bold relief against the
+eastern sky, and it tells him that he will find a hospitable welcome
+and safe harbourage within the Golden Gate. So it is dear to him after
+his voyage over stormy seas as was of old
+
+  "Sunium's marbled steep"
+
+to the Greek sailor nearing home.
+
+Near Stone Lake we met the head commissioner of the Park who saluted
+us with all the easy grace of the Californian; and on the way we had
+the opportunity of receiving a Scotch gentleman and his wife into our
+carriage; and, later, a clergyman who had been wandering about in the
+midst of sylvan scenes, rode with us to the entrance of the Park,
+where we bade our new found friends good-bye, each to go his own way,
+at eventide.
+
+The third day after our arrival in San Francisco I had a longing
+to gaze on the Pacific ocean which I had never seen. There were
+no laurels for us to win, such as Balboa justly deserved when he
+discovered the Pacific and first beheld its wide waters in the year
+1513; but it was a natural desire to look on its broad expanse and to
+stand on its shores, along which bold navigators had sailed since the
+days of Cabrillo and Drake. Taking a line of cars running out to the
+Presidio, Ashton and I walked the rest of the way. A young man named
+Logan, a cousin of the famous General Logan, who was in the service
+of the government as a mail carrier, but off duty that afternoon,
+volunteered most courteously to be our guide. He accompanied us for
+more than a mile and a half of the distance beyond the Presidio, but
+then had to return to meet an engagement. We went forward climbing the
+steep hills and finally found that we were standing on the heights
+above the immense ocean, in the grounds of the Government Reservation.
+It was a solemn moment when we for the first time beheld the Pacific,
+and we were greatly impressed. There the mighty waters, across which
+the ships sail to China and Japan and the Sandwich Islands and the
+Philippine Archipelago and the South Seas, lay before our eyes. The
+darkness of the night was coming on, but the sky far off across the
+waters, away beyond the Farallone Islands, was tinged with red and
+gold, the fading glories of the dying day. We could see in the glow
+of evening the heaving of the sea and the motion of its comparatively
+calm surface, in that twilight hour.
+
+Gathering clouds hung over the horizon and formed the shadows in the
+picture. Every picture has light and shade. It is a portrait of life.
+We stood silently for a time drinking in all the beauty of the scene,
+well nigh entranced, awed, thrilled betimes; and at last in order to
+give fitting expression to the thoughts within our hearts, I suggested
+that we should hold a brief service in recognition of His power who
+holds the seas in the hollow of His hands, Who had guided our feet in
+safe paths and byways of the world, often over its troublesome waves.
+Ashton said an appropriate Collect from the dear old Prayer Book of so
+many tender and far off memories, while I expressed my feelings in the
+grand words of the Psalm--"Thy way is in the sea, and Thy paths in the
+great waters, and Thy footsteps are not known." We felt God's presence
+in that hushed hour, we saw in vision the divine Christ walking over
+the waters to us!
+
+In our wanderings about the city the sleeping places of the dead
+naturally attracted our attention; and where, especially, on Sunday
+afternoons, the living congregate to mourn over their loved ones, to
+scatter flowers on their graves, or to while away an hour amid scenes
+which have a melancholy interest and tend to sobriety and remind one
+of another land where there is no death for those who pass through the
+Golden Gate of eternity. Cemeteries have always attracted the living
+to their solemn precincts at stated times, anniversaries and fiestas.
+It is so in all lands, among all peoples no matter what their creed,
+and in all ages. Jew and Gentile alike, Mohammedan and Christian, by
+visiting tomb or grassy mound with some token of their affection, the
+prayer uttered, the tear shed, the blossoms laid on sacred soil, after
+this manner cherish the memories of the departed. And it is well!
+Scenes which the traveller may witness in the Campo Santo of Genoa or
+in the Koimeteria of Athens, on Sundays, in the Mezâristans of Skutari
+on the Bosphorus and Eyûb on the Golden Horn, on Friday afternoons,
+and in the Kibroth of old Tiberias by the Sea of Galilee or outside of
+the walls of Jerusalem, on Saturday or in the Cimenterios of Mexico
+City on fiestas, all testify to the universality of the deep and
+tender feelings of reverence and affection which animate the human
+heart and make all men as one in thought and sentiment as they stand
+on time's shores and follow the receding forms of their kindred and
+friends with wishful eyes bedimmed with tears across the Dark River!
+
+While there is a Burial Place for the soldiers who die for their
+country or in their country's cause, on the grounds of the Presidio,
+the principal cemeteries of San Francisco seem to cluster around
+Lone Mountain in the northwestern part of the city and south of the
+Military Reservation. These are Laurel Hill, Calvary, Masonic and Odd
+Fellows. The Jews have their special burying ground between Eighteenth
+and Twentieth streets, and the old Mission cemetery where some of the
+early Indian converts and Franciscan Fathers sleep their last sleep,
+is close by the Mission Dolores, on the south side.
+
+The group around Lone Mountain is dominated by a conspicuous cross on
+the hill top, which, as a sentinel looks down with a benison on the
+resting places of the dead, and, in heat and cold, in storm and
+sunshine, seems to speak to the heart about Him "Who died, and was
+buried, and rose again for us." To this picturesque spot too the
+Chinese have been attracted, and they bury their departed west
+of Laurel Hill, with all the rites peculiar to the followers of
+Confucius.
+
+But what thrilling histories of men from many lands are entombed in
+all these tens of thousands of graves, what fond hopes are buried
+here, what withered blossoms of life mingle with this consecrated soil
+by the waters of the Pacific! Many a one who sought the Golden West in
+pursuit of fortune found all too soon his goal here with unfulfilled
+desire, while anxious friends and relatives beyond the seas and the
+mountains or on the other side of the continent awaited his home
+coming for years in vain. Here, indeed, are no rolls of papyrus, no
+hieroglyphics, as in Egyptian tombs, to tell us the story of the
+past, but it is written in the experiences of the gold seekers, it is
+interwoven with the life of the city, now the mistress of the great
+ocean which laves her feet, and it is burned into the memories of many
+living witnesses.
+
+If yonder grave could tell its tale it would speak to you of a
+misspent life which might have been a blessing--of midnight revels and
+mad excesses and Circe's feasts, the ruin of soul and body. And this
+grave could talk to you about one who, far away from home and
+kindred, had pined and wasted away in his loneliness, and had died of
+homesickness. But while you are touched with the pathetic recital,
+that grave near by reads you a lesson of patience, of heroism, of
+faith, of purity of soul and body preserved in the midst of fiery
+temptations, even while strong men were yielding themselves up to
+"fleshly lusts which war against the soul."
+
+The shrubs and trees and flowers on which you gaze, and which are
+green and blossom the year round, now beautify all and mother earth
+softens with her ministries the severities of the past, and sunlit
+skies bend over the dead, as of old in many lands, and star-bedecked
+heavens tell still to the living, as once to those whose bodies
+mouldered here, the story of the life beyond, where glory and riches
+and honour are the heritage of the faithful!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THEN AND NOW, OR EIGHTEEN HUNDRED FORTY-NINE AND NINETEEN HUNDRED AND
+ONE
+
+Triangular Section of San Francisco--Clay Banks, Mud and Rats
+in 1849--Streets at That Time--Desperate Characters--Gambling
+Houses--Thirst for Gold--Saloons and Sirens--The Bella Union--The
+Leaven of the Church--Robbers' Dens and Justice in Mining Camps--The
+Vigilance Committee and What It Did--San Francisco Well Governed
+Now--Highway Robbers and the Courts--Chief of Police Wittman and His
+Men--A Visit to Police Headquarters--The Cells--A Murderer--A Chinese
+Woman in Tears--A Hardened Offender.
+
+
+The traveller to the City of the Golden Gate, as he approaches it,
+having crossed the great bay from Oakland, notices that the hundreds
+of streets which greet his gaze run from east to west, and cross each
+other at right angles, except a triangular section of this metropolis
+of the west. This part of the city may be compared to a great wedge
+with the broad end on the bay. It begins at the Market Street Ferry
+house and runs south as far as South Street at the lower end of China
+Basin. This triangle is bounded on the north by Market Street, which
+follows a line west by southwest, and on the south by Channel and
+Ridley Streets, the latter crossing Market Street at the sharp end of
+the wedge-shaped section. The portion of the city within the triangle
+embraces in its water-front the Mission, Howard, Folsom, Stewart,
+Spear, Fremont, and Merrimac Piers, together with Mail and Hay Docks.
+Here you may see steamships and sailing vessels from all parts of
+the world moored at their piers, while others are riding at anchor a
+little way out from the land. The whole scene is at once picturesque
+and animated and suggests great activity. We must remember, however,
+that where now are these massive piers with their richly laden ships
+and noble argosies, as far back only as 1849 there were no stable
+docks, no properly constructed wharfs, no convenient landing places.
+Here only were clay banks, which gave no promise of the great future
+with its commercial grandeur, and everything was insecure and
+unsatisfactory, especially in rainy weather, which began in November
+and continued with more or less interruption until April. The new
+comer, not cautious to secure a sure footing would sometimes sink deep
+in the soft mud or even disappear in the spongy earth. With the ships
+too came not only the gold-seekers from many lands, but rats also as
+if they had a right and title to the rising city. These swarmed along
+the primitive wharfs, and at times they would invade the houses and
+tents of the people and go up on their beds or find a lodging-place in
+vessels and cup-boards. Some of these rodents which followed in the
+wake of the new civilisation were from China and Japan, while others,
+gray and black, came in ships from Europe and from American cities on
+the Atlantic seaboard. Even wells had to be closed except at the time
+of the drawing of water, in order to keep out these pests which made
+the life of many a householder well nigh intolerable.
+
+The streets were few in number then, not more than fifteen or twenty,
+as the town, at the time of which we are speaking, had only a
+population of about five thousand people. As San Francisco grew,
+however, under the impetus which the discovery of gold gave to it, the
+streets were naturally multiplied; and, to overcome the mire in wet
+weather and also the sand of the dry season, which made it difficult
+for pedestrians to walk hither and thither or for vehicles to move
+to and fro, they were planked in due time. Wooden sewers were also
+constructed on each side of the street to carry off the surface water.
+A plank road besides ran out to Mission Dolores, the vicinity of which
+was a great resort on Sundays, especially in the days when "bull
+fighting" was a pastime and the old Spanish and Mexican elements of
+the population had not been eliminated or had not lost their prestige.
+
+As one went to and fro then and encountered men of all nationalities,
+it was not an uncommon thing to meet many who had the look of
+desperadoes, whose upper garment was a flannel shirt, while revolvers
+looked threateningly out of their belts at the passerby. All this of
+course, was changed after a time, when the days of reform came, as
+they always come when the need arises. There is an element in human
+society which acts as a corrective, and wrong is finally dethroned,
+and right displays her power with a divine force and a vivid sweep as
+a shaft of lightning from the sky. We need never despair about the
+triumph of the good. It is a noble sentiment which Bryant utters in
+"The Battle Field:"
+
+  "Truth crushed to earth shall rise again:
+    The eternal years of God are hers;
+  But Error, wounded, writhes in pain,
+    And dies among his worshippers."
+
+And never was there a community or a city where Truth asserted her
+sway more potently in the midst of evil than in San Francisco in the
+trying days of her youth. With the rush from all lands to California
+for the coveted gold came the lawless and the blood-thirsty. Men in
+the gambling houses would sometimes quarrel over the results of the
+game or over some "love affair." Fair Helen and unprincipled, gay,
+thoughtless Paris were here by the Golden Gate. The old story is
+constantly repeating itself since the Homeric days. Duels were fought
+betimes as a consequence, and the issue for one or both of the
+combatants was generally fatal. Gambling in those days was, from a
+worldly stand-point, the most profitable business, that is for the
+professional player or the saloon-keeper. Indeed it was looked upon
+as quite respectable. It has a strange fascination at all times for a
+certain class, with whom it becomes a passion as much as love for the
+wine-cup, and one must be well grounded in principle to resist its
+influences. Many once noble souls who had been tenderly brought up
+were led astray. Away from home and its restraining associations,
+gambling, drinking, and other sins and vices became their ruin. In
+calm moments when alone or under some momentary impulse of goodness
+there would rise before them the vision of God-fearing parents--of
+open Bibles--of hallowed Sundays; but the thirst for gold could not be
+quenched, the mad race must be run, and to the bitter end, dishonour,
+death, the grave! Shelley, if he had stood in the midst of the
+gamblers, staking all, even their souls, for gold, in those California
+days of wild revelry, could not have expressed himself more appositely
+than in his graphic and truthful lines, in Queen Mab:
+
+  "Commerce has set the mark of selfishness;
+  The signet of its all-enslaving power
+  Upon a shining ore, and called it gold:
+  Before whose image bow the vulgar great,
+  The vainly rich, the miserable proud,
+  The mob of peasants, nobles, priests, and kings,
+  And with blind feelings reverence the power
+  That grinds them to the dust of misery.
+  But in the temple of their hireling hearts
+  Gold is a living god, and rules in scorn
+  All earthly things but virtue."
+
+The saloons fifty years ago were the centres of attraction for the
+over-wrought miner, the aimless wanderer, the creature of impulse,
+the child of passion. They were decorated with an eye to brilliant
+colours, to gorgeous effect, to all that appeals to the sensuous
+element in our nature. They were the best built and most richly
+furnished houses in the San Francisco of that period. The walls were
+adorned with costly paintings, and the furniture was in keeping with
+this lavish outlay. In each gambling house was a band of music, and a
+skillful player received some $30 per night for his services. Painted
+women were the presiding geniuses at the wheels of fortune and these
+modern Circes or Sirens played the piano and the harp with all the
+passion of their art to drown men's cares and make them forget duty
+and principle and honour. The tables of the players of the games were
+piled high with yellow gold to serve as a tempting bait. The games
+were chiefly what are called in the nomenclature of the gambling
+fraternity. Rouge-et-noir, Monté-faro, and Roulette. The men who lost,
+whatever their feelings might be, and they were often bitter, as a
+rule disguised their sore disappointment. They would try their luck
+again, but this only led them deeper in the mire. Many an one lost a
+princely fortune in a night. The gambling houses were located chiefly
+around the Plaza or Portsmouth Square, of which we have already
+spoken. They were filled, as a general thing, all night, with an eager
+throng, especially on Sunday. Indeed everything then had its full
+course on Sunday. There were various sports; drinking and gambling ran
+riot. Blasphemous words filled the air. Men swore without the least
+thought. But profanity is not alone restricted to a frontier or border
+community, where laws and a sense of propriety are wanting. One may
+hear it in old and civilised towns, as he walks the streets, and
+sometimes from the lips of boys. In these saloons people of all ages
+congregated from youth up to hoary hairs. Here were the Indian and the
+Negro, the American and the Mexican, the Spaniard and the Frenchman,
+the Italian, the Dutchman and the German, the Dane and the Russian,
+the English, the Irish and the Scotchman, the Chinaman and the
+Japanese. One of the most noted of the saloons was the Bella Union, a
+Monte Carlo in itself. Woe betide the miner from the mountains with
+gold who entered it. Here was a richly appointed bar to tempt the
+desire for drink, while costly mirrors were arranged in such wise as
+to reflect the scenes of revelry, and pictures that were worth large
+sums of money hung on the walls. The silverware too would have done
+credit to a royal board. Both the tables and the bar were well
+patronised at all times.
+
+Naturally with such elements of society, with the mad thirst for gold,
+with the loose morality which prevailed to a large extent, there
+would be great lawlessness. It must be borne in mind however that the
+Christian Church was at work in those perilous times, which live only
+in memory now, and was gradually leavening the whole lump. There were
+devout men and true women in early San Francisco, who, in the midst of
+"a crooked generation," kept themselves pure and "unspotted from the
+world." And is it not true that men can hold fast their crown, that no
+man take it from them, if only they will make use of the grace of God?
+God has His faithful witnesses in every place, in every age, no matter
+how corrupt. There are the "seven thousand" who do not bow the kneel
+to Baal, there are the faithful "few names" even in Sardis who do not
+defile their garments with the world. San Francisco had them in those
+days of special temptation, brave and noble souls who could say with
+Sir Galahad:
+
+  "My strength is as the strength of ten,
+    Because my heart is pure."
+
+In this strength they rose up and purged the place, even though as
+difficult as a labour of Hercules. The men of the Vigilance Committee
+will ever live in song and story. Even up in the mountains in the gold
+mines of El Dorado county and elsewhere the spirit of the men of
+San Francisco was at work in the camps. Robbers were there, bold
+characters, dark-browed men, who would not hesitate to steal, and
+kill, if need be, in their nefarious work. The miners had their perils
+to encounter in these bandits. The robbers had their dens in the
+mountains in lonely places, beside a trail sometimes, and in the
+depths of the forests. The dens had generally two rooms on the ground
+floor and a loft which was reached by a ladder. If a belated miner
+sought shelter or food here he was given a lodging in the loft. If he
+drank with his "host" it would most likely be some liquor that was
+drugged, and in his heavy sleep he was sure to be robbed. In the
+morning he had no redress, and he might consider himself fortunate if
+he escaped with his life. Sometimes however the robber was brought
+to quick justice by the miners. Robbery was not countenanced in the
+camps. If one should steal, his fellows would rise up, try him in a
+hastily convened court, and condemn him to death, and hang him on
+the nearest tree. It was a rule that the body should be exposed for
+twenty-four hours as a warning to others. All this may seem harsh, but
+under the circumstances it was the only way in which justice could
+be dealt out to offenders. The camps were in consequence orderly and
+safe. We must not think, because the Vigilance Committees of the
+mining camps and of the city took the administration of law into their
+own hands that therefore they were lawless and that their rule was
+that of the mob. No, this was the only way in which peaceable citizens
+could be protected from the violence and crimes perpetrated by the
+turbulent and disorderly and vicious elements of society. In the years
+1851 and 1852 there was great lawlessness in San Francisco. Bad men,
+who had served terms in prisons for their misdeeds, and men who
+wished to disorganise society, who had the spirit of anarchy in their
+breasts, organised themselves into bands for the purpose of stealing
+and killing, and good citizens stood in mortal fear of them. Buildings
+were burned at pleasure, houses were broken open and robberies
+committed, and even murder was resorted to when the wrongdoers found
+it necessary in the accomplishment of their hellish purposes. The
+officials of the city were careless in punishing offenders, indeed
+they were powerless to do so, and the lawbreakers knew this. It is
+said that over a hundred persons were murdered during the period
+of six months; and the blood of these victims cried to Heaven for
+vengeance. To assert the majesty of law and to punish criminals a
+large number of the best citizens, who grieved over the evils which
+prevailed, organised themselves into the famous Vigilance Committee.
+The seal which they adopted showed their worthy purpose. In the centre
+was the figure of a human eye to denote watchfulness. Above the eye
+was the word, Committee,--beneath, Vigilance; then the name, San
+Francisco. Around the edge of the seal ran the legends: "Fiat Justitia
+Ruat Coelum. No creed; no party; no sectional issues." While not
+constituted exactly like the Court of Areopagus, yet the Vigilance
+Committee of San Francisco did for a time exercise authority over
+life and death like the Athenian judges on Mars' Hill. The shaft of
+lightning first fell on an ex-convict who was caught stealing. Eighty
+members of the Committee tried and convicted him, and on the same
+night he was hanged in Portsmouth Square in view of the saloons. A
+thrill ran through the whole community, and when, the next morning,
+the people read the names of the prominent citizens who served on
+the Committee, their action made a deep and salutary impression. The
+Vigilance Committee prosecuted its work till the city was purged of
+its evils, and it exercised from time to time its authority until the
+year 1856. As a result of its firmness, its promptness in punishing
+criminals, and its high-minded aims, the land had rest for twenty
+years. A weak administration of justice is an encouragement to wrong
+doing. Municipal and state officials can best serve their city and
+country by dealing quick and severe blows at lawlessness; but to be
+effective they must be men of integrity, above reproach, and withal
+just. To-day San Francisco is one of the most orderly and best
+governed cities in the United States. During my rambles through its
+streets I went to and fro at all hours without being molested. I never
+met a drunken man or a disorderly person. The city feels the effect of
+the Committee's good work even to this latest hour. It serves as an
+example. Justice is dealt out speedily to offenders. There are few
+if any technical delays of the law and the criminal rarely escapes
+without punishment. Some examples have occurred recently which show
+that the judges of the superior courts are alive to their duty and
+that they can perform it when the occasion arises. A man named John H.
+Wood, a former soldier, was convicted of highway robbery, and he was
+speedily sentenced to imprisonment for life in Folsom Penitentiary.
+Judge Cook who passed sentence on him took the position that a man who
+used a deadly weapon in the commission of his crime should receive the
+full penalty of the law. A man who holds a pistol to shoot will take
+life, therefore he ought to have a life sentence. Wood, who belongs
+to a wealthy family in Texas, has a checkered history. He served as
+a soldier for a time in the Philippine Islands. Here he deserted his
+post and committed highway robbery. He was tried by court martial for
+larceny and convicted. Then he was brought to San Francisco and put
+in the military prison on the Island of Alcatraz. He was finally
+discharged from the army in disgrace. A few months ago he tried to rob
+a showcase man and held a revolver at his head while he seized a watch
+and chain. He was immediately arrested by three officers, and a month
+after he was sentenced for life. As showing the depravity of the
+man he said after receiving sentence: "That is an awful dose, and I
+haven't had my breakfast yet." Possibly in prison he will reflect upon
+his evil life, and be softened, and repent. He might have been a good
+citizen, worthy of his country; but he hardened his heart and sank
+deeper and deeper in his degradation. Oh, the hardening of the heart!
+It was Pharaoh's sin. It is the sin of many an one now.
+
+Another highway robber, Edward Davis, was sentenced at the same time
+with Wood to serve in the State Penitentiary for thirty-three years.
+He also pointed a pistol to the head of his victim. But thirty-three
+years! He will probably die in prison. It is a life thrown away, one
+of God's best gifts. But if stern justice be meted out here in this
+world, what must the unrepenting sinner, who has trampled the divine
+law under foot, expect in the world to come? San Francisco teaches a
+lesson which reaches farther than an earthly tribunal. The judge
+on his bench is an image of the Judge who weighs human life in His
+balances.
+
+There is of course crime in San Francisco as in all other cities.
+Indeed crime is universal, whether in the Orient or the Occident. The
+Chief of Police Wittman accounts for highway robbery, to the extent
+in which it prevails, from the fact that San Francisco is a garrison
+city. Here are numerous recruits and discharged soldiers, and, as a
+seaport, it draws to itself the scum and offscourings of all nations,
+Hindoos, Chinese, Malays, and all other kinds of people.
+
+The police force is hardly adequate to patrol the entire city. It
+consists only of 589 men all told, and they are fine, manly looking
+guardians of the law, always ready to do their duty, always courteous
+to strangers, answering all questions intelligently. It is claimed,
+moreover, that the criminal element of the country drifts to San
+Francisco in the winter on account of the climate and also through the
+attractions of the racetrack. The police also find that the places
+where poker-games are played are a rendezvous for criminals. In 1887
+and 1888 there was an outbreak of highway robbery, but the grand
+jury acted promptly in the matter and the courts soon suppressed it.
+Property and life therefore are jealously guarded in the City of the
+Golden Gate, and bad characters who go thither to prey on the public
+soon get their deserts. In this respect then San Francisco is a
+desirable place in which to live.
+
+One evening in company with a party of friends, Rev. Dr. Ashton of
+Clean, N.Y., Rev. Dr. Reynold Marvin Kirby of Potsdam, N.Y., Rev.
+Clarence Ernest Ball of Alexandria, Va., Rev. Henry Sidney Foster of
+Green Bay, Wis., the Rev. William Barnaby Thorne of Marinette, Wis.,
+and Doctor Robert J. Gibson, surgeon in the United States Army,
+stationed at San Francisco, I visited the police headquarters,
+situated on the east side of Portsmouth Square. This is a large
+building of several stories with numerous offices. The chief in his
+office on the main floor, on the right hand of the entrance, received
+us courteously and assigned to us a detective according to an
+arrangement previously made with Ashton. In the office were portraits
+of police commissioners and the chiefs and others who had been
+connected with the department for many years. Entering an elevator we
+were soon on the topmost floor where were the cells in which prisoners
+just arrested and waiting for trial were confined. The doors of the
+cells, all of iron, were opened or closed by moving a lever. It was
+now about 9:30 P.M., and officers were bringing in such persons as had
+been arrested for theft, for assault and battery, for drunkenness and
+other kinds of evil doing. Towards daybreak the cells are pretty well
+filled, but now they were nearly empty. How true His words who knows
+what is in man. "Men love darkness rather than light because their
+deeds are evil!"
+
+One young man who had killed another in a quarrel was pointed out to
+us. The woman who loved him and who expected to be his wife, and still
+had faith in him, was at his side, with her sister, conversing with
+him between her sobs, in a low earnest tone. He seemed greatly
+agitated. A detective stood a little way off from the trio. The
+evidence was strong against the murderer, and an officer said to us
+that there was no chance for him to escape from the penalty of the
+law. In a cell was a young Chinese woman, just brought in, possibly
+for disorderly conduct. She could not have been more than fifteen
+or sixteen years old. She was pretty and refined in appearance and
+handsomely dressed, and she wept as if her heart would break. Not yet
+hardened by sin, and probably imprisoned for the first time, she felt
+the shame and degradation of her lot. I could not but feel pity for
+her, and expressed sorrow for her, though she may not have understood
+my words. At least she could interpret the signs of sympathy in voice
+and expression. These are a universal language. Maybe she was more
+sinned against than sinning,--and that Divine One Who reads all hearts
+and knows the temptations and snares which beset unwary feet, would
+say to her--"Go, and sin no more!"
+
+In another cell was an old offender who had a face furrowed with sin.
+As we looked at her I could see that she regarded our presence as an
+intrusion. I recalled Dr. Watt's lines:
+
+  "Sinners who grow old in sin
+    Are hardened in their crimes."
+
+Yet there is an awakening of the conscience at last, and even a prison
+house with its corrections may be a door of escape from that other
+prison of the sinful soul from which no one can go forth, be he
+culprit or juror, counsellor or judge, until his pardon is pronounced
+by Him who can forgive sins.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+FROM STREET NOMENCLATURE TO A CANNON
+
+The Streets of the City--Numbers and Names--Example of Athens--Names
+of Men--Names of States and Countries--American Spirit--Flowers
+and Trees--Market Street--Pleasantries--Mansions of California
+Avenue--Grand Reception--Art in California--Cost of Living in
+1849--Hotels and Private Houses now--Restaurants--New City
+Hall--Monumental Group--Scenes and Representations--History of a
+Cannon--Chance Meeting with General Shafter--Mission of the Republic.
+
+
+The streets of the city! They are an important feature, and the
+traveller naturally observes their direction and studies their
+character. In the description of New Jerusalem, St. John noted the
+fact that its street was "pure gold." The streets of earthly cities
+cannot vie with the celestial, though the gold of commerce may be
+found in their warehouses and mansions; but if men were as earnest in
+seeking after the treasures of Heaven as were the tens of thousands
+who flocked to the gold-fields of California in 1849, they would
+surely win the fortune which awaits them within the Golden Gate of the
+City on the banks of the Crystal River. San Francisco has her noted
+streets, just as the City of Mexico has her San Francisco promenade,
+leading from the Alameda to the Plaza de Zocalo; or Rome her famous
+Corso, the old Via Flaminia, with its shops and its teeming life; or
+Athens her Hodos Hermou, with its old Byzantine church of Kapnikaraea;
+or Constantinople her Grande Rue de Pera, with its hotels and theatres
+and bazaars; or old Damascus, her "street that is called straight,"
+Suk et-Tawileh, the street of the Long Bazaar, with its Oriental life
+and colouring; or Cairo her picturesque Muski, where you may find
+illustrations of scenes in the Arabian Nights, and gratify your senses
+with
+
+  "Sabean odours from the spicy shore
+  Of Araby the Blest."
+
+The streets of the city by the Golden Gate have an interesting
+nomenclature, which well deserves one's study for what it teaches.
+Some streets in the triangular section of San Francisco, already
+spoken of, are numbered. These begin west of Fremont street and run
+up to Thirteenth, being bounded by Market street. Then the numbered
+streets take a turn to the left hand and go from Fourteenth to
+Twenty-Sixth, in the southwestern section of the city, and run due
+west. Numbers on the streets of any city are of course a convenience,
+but such a nomenclature has nothing else to commend it, and lacks
+imagination and sacrifices bits of history which may be interwoven
+with municipal life and show progress from small beginnings and
+perpetuate pioneers' names and benefactors' memories. Modern Athens
+in naming her streets has very wisely called them after some of the
+demigods, heroes, generals, statesmen, and poets of Greece; and
+grateful too for the work of Lord Byron in behalf of her independence,
+she has honoured him who in immortal song spurred on her sons to
+arise and cast off the Turkish yoke, with a name on one of her
+thorough-fares--Hodos Tou Buronos--which the traveller reads with
+emotion, even as he gazes also with admiration on the beautiful
+Pentelic monument reared to the memory of her benefactor, near the
+Arch of Hadrian, while Athenae is represented as crowning him with the
+victorious olive. With feelings and sentiments akin to this the sons
+of the Golden West have associated forever with the streets of their
+great city the names of men who either benefited California or take
+high rank in national life or are otherwise worthy of perpetual
+commemoration. Hence we have a Berkeley street, a Buchanan, a Castro,
+a Fillmore, a Franklin, a Fremont, a Grant, a Hancock, a Harrison,
+a Hawthorne, and a Humboldt street. Juniper street is a memorial of
+Father Junipero Serra, founder of Franciscan Missions. Kepler takes
+us up to the stars, which shine beautifully over the lofty Sierras,
+California's eternal rampart; while Lafayette speaks to us of
+friendship and chivalry, still alive in these matter of fact days. As
+you walk through the streets you see also the name of Kearney, not
+Dennis of "sand-lot" fame, but that of General S.W. Kearney, whose
+sword aided in placing the star of California in our Nation's Flag;
+you read too the name of the old Indian chief, Marin, and that of
+Montezuma takes you across the Rio Grande and back to the days of
+Mexican romance and barbaric splendour. Here also Montgomery is
+remembered, the patriotic commander of the Portsmouth, who gave orders
+to his marines to raise the Stars and Stripes, in place of Spanish
+ensigns and the Bear Flag, on the Plaza of Yerba Buena, old San
+Francisco, in 1846. We find also such well known names as Scott,
+Sherman and Stanford. We have too a St. Francis street and a St.
+Joaquin street; Sumner, Sutter, Tilden and Webster are remembered
+also. Nearly all the states of the Union speak to us by these waters
+of the Pacific in the stones of the streets. All the original Thirteen
+except Georgia have been honoured. Possibly this will receive
+recognition in the future. It is to be noted, however, that the
+adjectives are omitted in the Carolinas and New Hampshire. New York is
+the exception together with Rhode Island. The other States which have
+given their names to streets are Alabama, Arkansas, California, the
+Dakotas without the qualifying adjective, Florida, Illinois, Indiana,
+Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri,
+Nebraska, Nevada, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
+The natural inference from this is that San Francisco has drawn
+her population from all parts of the land; so that here you have
+representatives of our great country, north, south, east and west
+gathered together. While there are many who delight to call themselves
+Native Sons, yet their fathers have sprung from households in New
+England and in the South and in the Middle States and elsewhere and
+new peoples are steadily migrating to the Pacific slopes, notably
+to this Queen City by the Golden Gate. In my intercourse with San
+Franciscans, this or that worthy citizen would say, with no little
+pride, I was born in New York, Boston is my birthplace, I am a native
+of Albany, or Saratoga, or Philadelphia, or Baltimore, or Savannah or
+New Orleans. Sometimes one would say to me, I came from the East. What
+part? The answer would be at times, Chicago, or St. Louis, or Omaha,
+as the case might be. But one thing was very noticeable, that they
+were all loyal Americans. I think it may be truly said that the spirit
+of patriotism is even stronger in the Pacific States than at the East.
+You could see the Flag of the Union everywhere, and there was abundant
+evidence in the life and speech of the people of San Francisco and of
+California generally that they were an integral part of the Republic
+and as anxious to have it prosperous and great and united as the most
+ardent American in any other part of the land.
+
+The cosmopolitan character of San Francisco is further indicated by
+the names of foreign countries and places which some of her streets
+bear. Here we note in our walks the names of Denmark and Japan,
+Honduras and Montenegro, Trinidad, Venezuela and Valencia, and also
+the Spanish town De Haro. Certain names also of cities tell us whence
+people have come to the City of the Golden Gate. We find an Albany, an
+Austin, and a Chattanooga street. There are also streets called Erie,
+Hartford, Vicksburg and York, San Jose and Santa Clara, while Fair
+Oaks speaks of one of the great battlefields of the Civil War. Some of
+the counties of the State have also fixed their names on the streets
+as Butte, El Dorado, Mariposa, Napa, Solano and Sonoma. The Potomac
+River has a name here also, while Sierra and Shasta represent the
+mountains. There are names of streets besides which take us among the
+trees and shrubs, such as the Cedar, the Locust, the Linden, the Oak,
+the Walnut, the Willow, the Ivy, the Laurel and the Myrtle. Of flowers
+there is a profusion in San Francisco. They bloom on every hand; and
+wherever there is a bit of ground or lawn in front of a house there
+you will see plants or flowers in blossom. Fuschias attain the height
+of ten feet in some places and are magnificent in the colour and
+beauty of their flowers. The heliotrope climbs up its support with
+eagerness and its blossoms vie in hue with the blue skies. You may
+also see the pink flowers of the Malva plant in abundance, the chaste
+mignonette and the Australian pea-vine. The latter is a favourite and
+clothes the bare walls of fence or house or trellis with a robe of
+beauty which queens might envy. Roses are rich and fragrant, white and
+pink chiefly, and delight the eye, no matter which way you turn. The
+Acacia grows here in San Francisco as if it were native to the soil;
+and the Monterey Cypress, green and beautiful, makes a handsome hedge,
+or, when given room and air, it attains to stately proportions. Here
+also you will find the Eucalyptus tree in its perfection, stately in
+form with its ivy-green foliage, and you look upon it with an admiring
+eye. California may be truly called a land of flowers as well as a
+land of fruits; and we err not in judgment when we say that close
+association with these beautiful products of the earth has a refining
+and an uplifting influence on the human heart. A man who has love for
+a flower is brought near to the Lord of the flowers, Who said as He
+walked over the meadows of Palestine--"Consider the lilies of the
+field, how they grow." So they have their sweet message of love and
+gentleness and peace for all, yes, these "stars of the earth," as the
+poet calls them. Such thoughts come to you as you gaze on the rich
+gardens of San Francisco and note their wealth of bright blossoms,
+brightening man's life and filling his soul with poetry and sentiment
+and longing for the beautiful and for the good.
+
+As we walk through the city we note that it is rapidly extending
+itself towards the south and the slopes of the Pacific, and new homes
+are constantly appearing in its suburbs, even climbing up the hills to
+the west. Market street, broad and straight, is San Francisco's main
+artery of business activity, and the cable cars which run through
+it are so numerous that a person who undertakes to cross this great
+avenue, especially during the busy hours of the day, must be careful
+lest he be run over. It reminds one of Broadway, New York, in this
+respect. All streets of the city converge towards Market street.
+Crowds of people throng it, and this is true, particularly during
+Saturday night, when the labours of the week are ended and the
+populace seek recreation. There are many large and attractive
+buildings on this street, as for example "The Call Building," "The
+Chronicle Building," "The Palace Hotel," and the "Emporium." As you
+walk up and down studying life you note many things, and you see good
+nature depicted in the faces of the people whom you meet. They all
+look bright and intelligent. I think there is something in the
+surroundings and in the exhilarating atmosphere which promotes
+fellowship and good feeling. There is a keen sense of humour often
+manifest. Among many of the things which I saw was an illuminated
+sign, with the legend: "Your bosom friend." As I drew near it I
+discovered that it was over a shirt store. It was certainly most
+suggestive. The women, as you see them going hither and thither, are
+the picture of health and many of them can boast of real beauty. Here
+are few if any pale faces, sallow complexions, cadaverous cheeks.
+There are various types of nationality, but it may be said that there
+is a California or San Francisco type, which is the product of climate
+and environment. One is struck with the animation manifested in the
+faces and movements of the men and women. They are quick too in
+reaching conclusions and witty in observation. A young man in one of
+the railway offices asked this question: "What," said he to me, "is
+the difference in dress between a bishop and any other clergyman," I
+replied that some of the bishops wore aprons, and that this was the
+only real difference in daily attire--except some special mark on the
+coat or the shape of the hat. I hastened to add by way of pleasantry,
+that my friend Ashton, who was standing beside me, and I had not an
+apron as yet. "Well," he replied promptly, "you have gotten beyond
+that."
+
+They take pleasure in telling a good story also. As Ashton and I were
+travelling one afternoon to San Rafael we were joined on the Saucelito
+ferry boat by a benevolent gentleman, named Ingram, who said he was a
+cousin of the Bishop of London. As we talked over various matters he
+finally said, "I will tell you a story. An Irishman landed in New York
+after a stormy voyage; and as he walked up Broadway he thought that
+he would go into the first place he saw, which looked like a Roman
+Catholic church, and there offer thanks for his safe journey. When he
+came to St. Paul's Chapel, with the statute of the Apostle in view, he
+went into it, and kneeling down he began to cross himself. The sexton
+seeing his demonstrations said to him, 'This is not a Roman church,
+this is a Protestant church.' But said he, 'It is a Catholic church.
+Don't you see the cross and the candles on the altar.' 'O no,' said
+the sexton in reply, 'It is a Protestant church.' 'No, no,' said the
+Irishman, 'you can't convince me that St. Paul turned Protestant when
+he came to America!'"
+
+One is impressed with the air of prosperity and thrift on every hand.
+Many of the houses are artistic in construction and elegant in their
+furnishings. Some of them are stately mansions, notably the Stanford,
+Huntington, Hopkins and Crocker residences on California avenue, in
+its most conspicuous section. The homes of these California kings are
+adorned with costly works of art, choice paintings, and beautifully
+chiselled marbles. During the sessions of the General Convention the
+Crocker mansions on the north side of the avenue were the centre
+of attraction in the liberal hospitality dispensed there and the
+courtesies shown to many of the Bishops and other Clergy. On the
+evening of Wednesday, October the ninth, Bishop Nichols held a
+reception for the Bishops, other Clergy, the Lay Deputies, and their
+friends, in the Hopkins' mansion, on the south side of California
+avenue. This is now used as an Art Institute, and it is admirably
+adapted to its purpose. The building was thronged all the evening by
+the members of the Convention and the representatives of San Francisco
+society. Five thousand people high in the councils of the Church
+and the Nation and in social walks were in attendance; and it was
+impossible to accommodate all who came. It is said that hundreds
+were turned away. The writer and his friends considered themselves
+fortunate to be able to thread their way through the crowd without
+being crushed or having their garments torn. It was the grandest
+function of a social character which ever took place on the Pacific
+coast. The costly paintings adorning chambers, galleries and reception
+rooms, the splendid specimens of statuary, the numerous pictures,
+the brilliant lights, the strains of joyous music, but above all the
+moving throng of handsome women beautifully arrayed, and the noble
+bearing of Bishop, Priest and layman, with the fine intellectual faces
+seen on all sides, made this reception a scene never to be forgotten.
+Who, in the days of forty-nine, would have dreamed that, a little over
+a half a century later, there would be such a magnificent gathering
+of intellect and beauty,--men and women with lofty aims and noted for
+their achievements in letters and art, and their prominence in Church
+and State, and excelling in virtuous deeds, on a hill which was then a
+barren waste of shifting sands?
+
+While I am speaking of the reception in the Hopkins' Art Institute, I
+may note that Californians have a great love for art. Their own grand
+scenery of mountain and valley and ocean fosters the love for the
+beautiful; and to-day they can point with pride to the works of such
+men as Julian Rix, Charles Dickman, H.J. Bloomer, J.M. Gamble, and
+H. Breuer, whose landscapes are eagerly sought for, and command high
+prices. The frequent sales of paintings are the best evidence that the
+people of San Francisco equal the citizens of the oldest cities of the
+land in refinement and the elevation of the mind and heart above the
+mere desire to make money. There is also a goodly array of female
+artists who deserve praise and honour. Eastern cities must look well
+to their laurels in the matter of art as well as in many other things.
+The contrast between 1849 and 1901 in the prices paid for articles
+of consumption and service rendered is quite remarkable. When Bayard
+Taylor visited San Francisco in 1849 he paid the sum of two dollars
+to a Mexican porter to carry his trunk from the ship to the Plaza or
+Portsmouth Square. Here in an adobe building, he tells us, he had his
+lodging. His bed, in a loft, and his three meals per day, consisting
+of beefsteak, bread and coffee, cost him thirty-five dollars a week.
+From other sources we learn that, if you kept house, you had to pay
+fifty cents per pound for potatoes,--one might weigh a pound. Apples
+were sold at fifty cents a piece, dried apples at seventy-five cents a
+pound. Fresh beef cost fifty cents a pound, milk was a dollar a quart,
+hens brought six dollars a piece, eggs nine dollars a dozen, and
+butter brought down from Oregon, was sold at the rate of two dollars
+and fifty cents per pound. Flour was in demand at fifty dollars a
+barrel, and a basket of greens would readily bring eight dollars. A
+cow cost two hundred dollars. A tin coffee pot was worth five dollars,
+and a small cooking stove was valued at one hundred dollars. A cook
+commanded three hundred dollars a month, a clerk two hundred dollars a
+month, and a carpenter received twelve dollars a day. Lumber sold for
+four hundred dollars per thousand feet, and for a small dwelling house
+you had to pay a rental of five hundred dollars per month. It must be
+remembered that people were pouring into San Francisco from all parts
+of the world in search of gold, that there were few if any persons to
+till the ground, and that many of the articles in demand for life's
+necessities were brought either across the Isthmus of Panama or around
+by Cape Horn. In consequence the cost of living was necessarily high.
+To-day you can live as cheaply in San Francisco or any other city of
+California, as Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, or San Diego, as in any
+eastern city or town. Rooms with board can be secured at the Palace
+Hotel, corner of Market street and New Montgomery, at the rate of
+three dollars and a half per day up to five dollars. Without board you
+can obtain a room for the sum of one dollar and a half up to three
+dollars. The Grand Hotel, the annex to the Palace, and just across
+the street, offers the same rates as the Palace. The Lick House, the
+corner of Montgomery and Sutler streets, will take you for three
+dollars up to five per day. The Occidental, corner of Montgomery and
+Bush streets charges also from three dollars up to five per day for
+board and room. The California Hotel, an imposing structure, on Bush
+street, supplies rooms at the rate of one dollar per day and upwards.
+The Baldwin, corner of Market and Powell streets, charges for board
+and room at the rate of two dollars and a half up to five per day; and
+the Russ House receives guests, giving room and board at the rate of
+one dollar and a half up to two dollars and a half per day--this hotel
+is situated on the corner of Montgomery and Pine streets. There are
+many other hotels where the traveller can be made comfortable at a
+moderate cost. It is the same with many private houses which are open
+for guests. In the latter a parlor and bedroom with the luxury of a
+bath may be had for two dollars per day. A single room can be secured
+for a dollar a day. In such a case you can obtain your meals at one of
+the numerous restaurants for which San Francisco is noted. There are
+the restaurants at the Palace, the California and other prominent
+hotels, the Maison Dorée in Kearney street, Westerfeldt's in Market
+street, and the Café in the Call Building on the top floor of the
+tower, from which you have a commanding view of the city in all
+directions. Good servants can be had at the rate of thirty dollars per
+month, especially the much abused Chinese, who cook and do the laundry
+work, and wait on the table, and render a willing service. I recall
+the faithfulness of the Chinaman "Fred," who tried to please his
+employer, and also the fidelity and zeal of "Max," the Dane, or Mads
+Christensen. Max was an ideal waiter. He had been only nine months in
+the United States, and yet he had learned sufficient of the English
+language to understand what was said to him and to express himself
+clearly. It is an example of persistence; and Max had the qualities
+which, in a young man, are bound to lead to success.
+
+In addition to the other great buildings you cannot fail to notice the
+New City Hall, a magnificent pile including the Hall of Records to the
+east of the main structure. The location is somewhat central, being
+opposite Eighth street, just north of Market street, and bounded by
+Park avenue, Larkin and McAllister streets. The plot of ground on
+which it is erected has an area of six and three-quarters acres and is
+triangular in shape. The front is eight hundred feet in length, the
+Larkin street side five hundred and fifty feet, and the McAllister
+side six hundred and fifty feet long. While the architecture is
+difficult to describe, as being of any particular order, yet it may be
+said that it is partly classical, partly of the renaissance style and
+that it has a suggestion of the Byzantine period, which is seen in so
+many buildings of a public character. Nothing, however, could be more
+dignified than this great and imposing structure, which is traversed
+by a main corridor crossed by a central one with two others, one in
+the east and the other in the west. These corridors which give you a
+sense of amplitude, are paved with Vermont marble. It has one chief
+dome, three hundred feet above the base, which is surmounted by a
+colossal figure with a torch in the uplifted right hand, a goddess of
+liberty. On another section of the Hall is a small tower with a flag
+staff, then a lower dome with a flag staff, the dome being supported
+by pillars with Corinthian capitals. Flowers were in bloom in the
+court-yards the day when I visited the building, and they gave an
+artistic appearance to the granite-foundations. The upper courses of
+the Hall are made of stucco in imitation of granite. The building,
+which was begun in 1870, was completed in 1895. What it cost is hard
+to tell. I questioned several persons in regard to it, but received
+different answers, ranging all the way from five millions of dollars
+up to thirteen millions. San Francisco, however, may well be proud of
+the white edifice, in which are located most of the offices relating
+to the business of the city. But we must not depart from these
+precincts until we have examined the monumental group in the New City
+Hall Square on the south side or front. The monument is circular in
+form and is crowned with a figure of a woman, representing California,
+in bronze. She wears a chaplet made of olive leaves, and holds a wand
+in her right hand, and in her left a large disk bordered with stars,
+while a bear is seen standing on her right side. No doubt Bruin has
+reference to the famous bear flag which had been raised on the Plaza
+in 1846, when California declared herself independent of Mexico, and
+which in the same year gave place to the Stars and Stripes. Around the
+monumental figure of California are subjects in bronze. First of all
+there is an overland wagon drawn by oxen, with pioneers accompanying
+it. Secondly an Indian wigwam with hunters and Indians representing
+the year 1850. In the third scene we have a buffalo hunt, the hunter
+holding a lasso in his hand, and then there is the dying buffalo.
+Succeeding this we have a domestic scene--fruits and wheat--and a
+reaper in 1848. We then note bronze-medallions of Sutter, James Lick,
+Fremont, Drake, the American Flag, and Serra. Moreover on this central
+monument we have the names of Stockton, Castro, Vallejo, Marshall,
+Sloat, Larkin, Cabrillo-Portalo. Then the date, "Erected A.D. 1894.
+Dedicated to the City of San Francisco by James Lick."
+
+The scenes on the four monuments around the central one are--First,
+the finding of gold in "'49"--three miners. Second, a figure with an
+oar. Third, Early Days. Indian with bow and arrow. Pioneer with saddle
+and lasso. A Franciscan preaching. Fourth, a figure crowned with
+wheat, apples in right hand, and the Horn of plenty with various
+fruits in the left hand. The monument bears this inscription, near the
+base--Whyte and De Rome, Founders. Frank Appersberger, Sculptor.
+
+In front of this most interesting monument is a cannon that has a
+history. Near the head of this instrument of destruction is the
+legend, _Pluribus nec Impar_. On the body of the cannon we read Le
+Prince De Conde. _Ultima Ratio Regum_. Louis Charles De Bourbon--Comte
+D'Eu., Due D'Aumale. A Douay--Par T. Berenger. Commissionaire. Des
+Fontes Le 23 Mars, 1754.
+
+The cannon is made of bronze, has a coat of arms, and is otherwise
+ornamented. It has two handles in the shape of dragons. It is twelve
+feet long. But it has another inscription in which we are deeply
+interested. This is in English, and reads as follows:
+
+"Captured at Santiago De Cuba, July 17, 1898, by the Fifth Army
+Corps, U.S. Army, Commanded by Major General William R. Shafter, and
+presented by him to the City of San Francisco, California, in trust
+for the Native Sons of the Golden West, and accepted as a token of the
+valor and patriotism of the Army of the United States."
+
+While I was reading the inscriptions and making measurements an open
+two-seated carriage was driven up to the curbstone, about four o'clock
+in the afternoon. From this a gentleman in a business suit, about
+sixty years of age, alighted and approached me. He was a man of
+pleasing address. He said to me, "You seem to be interested in this
+cannon." "I am," was the reply. Then he began to pace it and to
+examine it, and said, "It is just twelve feet long." He thought that
+possibly it came into the hands of the Spaniards during the Napoleonic
+wars, and that it at length found its way over to Cuba to help
+in enslaving the people of that island. As I was attracted to
+my informant, I ventured to ask him whom I had the pleasure of
+addressing. Imagine my astonishment and delight when he said
+modestly--"I am General Shafter." I said to him, "I am glad to meet
+one so brave and who has helped to add new lustre to our Flag." He
+replied that "he considered it a privilege to have had a share in the
+liberation of Cuba, and that our beloved nation was on the march to
+still greater glory." Finding out where I came from, and that I lived
+near Ballston Spa, he said, "You must know my son-in-law, William H.
+McKittrick." I replied that I did, that I knew him when he was a boy,
+and that he and his family were my parishioners, when I was Rector of
+Christ Church, Ballston Spa, twenty-eight years ago. Said he, "William
+distinguished himself in the Cuban War. He is now a Captain and
+Assistant Adjutant-General, and it was he who was the first to hoist
+the Flag over Santiago." The General having courteously invited me to
+call on him, soon after bade me good-bye. It was a chance meeting, but
+full of interest, especially under the circumstances. Here was the
+hero who had captured the cannon and who had won laurels for himself
+and for his country. McKittrick also comes of a patriotic family, his
+father having laid his life on the altar of his country in the Civil
+War; and after the elder McKittrick is named the Grand Army Post of
+Ballston Spa, N.Y.--Post McKittrick. General Shafter was as modest
+on the day when I met him by the cannon as he was brave at Santiago.
+While the Republic has such worthy sons she has nothing to fear.
+Her mission is one of peace to her own people in all the States and
+Territories of the Union, and in all our Colonial possessions; and the
+motto of every citizen should be _Non sibi sed Patriae_. For every
+churchman it ought to be _Non sibi sed Ecclesiae_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+CHINAMEN OF SAN FRANCISCO--THEIR CALLINGS AND CHARACTERISTICS
+
+A Visit to Chinatown--Its Boundaries--A Terra Incognita--Fond of
+Mongrels--My Licensed Guide--The Study of the Signs--Men of All
+Callings--Picture of the Chinaman--Devoid of Humour--Confucius--Great
+Men from Good Mothers--Confucius to Women--Mormonism and
+Mohammedanism--How to Regenerate China--Slaves of the Lamp--Chinamen
+Impassive--Aroused to Wrath--How They Dress--The Queue--"Pidgin"
+English--Payment of Debts--Bankrupt Law--Suicide.
+
+
+When in the City of the Golden Gate you will not fail to visit the
+Chinese Quarter, or "Chinatown," as it is popularly called. Just as in
+an Oriental city like Jerusalem or Constantinople you find different
+nationalities or races living apart from each other, so here in
+San Francisco you have "Little China" in the heart of Anglo-Saxon
+civilisation. It is as if you had unfolded to your wondering eyes in a
+dream some town from the banks of the Pearl River, the Yangtse-Kiang,
+or the Hwangho or. Yellow River; and it seems strange indeed that,
+without the trouble or expense and danger of crossing the waters of
+the Pacific, you can by a short walk from the midst of the teeming
+life of an American City, be ushered into streets that are foreign in
+appearance and where scenes that are unfamiliar to the eye attract
+your attention on every hand. With the exception of the houses, which,
+as a rule, take on a European or an American style of architecture,
+you might imagine that you were in Canton or some other Chinese city.
+The life is truly Asiatic and Mongolian in its character and in its
+display as well as in its customs. The home of the sons of the Flowery
+Kingdom in San Francisco is in the north-eastern section of the city,
+and may be said to be in one of the best portions of the metropolis
+of the West, sheltered as it is from the winds of the Pacific by the
+hills which are back of it, and with a commanding view of the Bay and
+its islands and the magnificent landscapes to the east, valleys and
+hills running up to the heights of the Sierras. The locality is
+bounded by Jackson, Pacific, Dupont, Commercial, and Sacramento
+streets, and embraces some eight squares; and within this space,
+crowded together, are the twenty-five or thirty thousand Chinese who
+form a part of the population of the city. There are Chinamen here and
+there in other parts of San Francisco, but nearly all live here in
+this quarter which we are now approaching. Here there are the homes of
+the people who came from the land of Confucius, here the famous shops,
+the theatres, the Joss-houses where heathen worship is maintained. As
+soon then as you set foot within the area described you feel that you
+are in a strictly foreign country; and if this is your first visit,
+the place is to you a sort of terra incognita. You will need a guide
+to take you through its labyrinths and point out to you its hidden
+recesses and explain the strange sights and interpret for you the
+language which sounds so oddly to your ears. If you have not some man
+to conduct you, a dragoman or courier, you will be likely to make
+mistakes as ludicrous as that related of an English woman. Sir Henry
+Howarth, the author of the "History of the Mongols," a learned and
+laborious work, was out dining one evening. It fell to his lot at his
+host's house to escort a lady to the dinner table; and she, having a
+confused idea of the great man's theme, surprised him somewhat by the
+abrupt question, "I understand, Sir Henry, that you are fond of dogs.
+Are you not? I am too." "Dogs, madam? I really must plead guiltless. I
+know nothing at all of them!" "Indeed," his fair questioner replied;
+"and they told me you had written a famous history of mongrels!" It
+is best then always to take a guide, and you will have no trouble in
+finding one, who will charge you from two to three dollars an hour. If
+you go with a small party, which is best, all can share the expense.
+It will take about three hours to explore the town thoroughly and
+study the life. The writer went through Chinatown on two evenings
+at an interval of a few days, and saw this Asiatic Quarter of San
+Francisco to great advantage. The first time was with a licensed guide
+of long experience, and the second time it was under the direction
+of a police-detective. Some five friends were in the party; and we
+started on our tour of exploration about half past nine o'clock at
+night. The night is the best time in which to study the life, for then
+you can see the Chinese in their houses and at their amusements, as
+well as many others who still are at work; for some of the Chinese
+artisans toil for sixteen hours a day, and long into the hours of the
+night. Here among them are no strikes for fewer hours, but patient
+toil, as it were in a treadmill, without a murmur. My licensed
+guide was Henry Gehrt, a man about fifty-five years old, of German
+parentage. He had been in the business for twenty-seven years, and he
+maintained an office on Sacramento Street. His badge was No. 60.
+All guides must wear badges according to law. As we went hither and
+thither we met occasionally groups of sight-seers, among them some of
+our friends, members of the Convention, Bishops, and clerical and lay
+deputies, who felt this was a rare opportunity to study heathendom;
+and I am sure all went away from this strange spot thanking God for
+our noble Anglo-Saxon civilisation, as well as for the knowledge of
+His Revelation.
+
+The houses, I observed, are three, and sometimes four stories high,
+with balconies and windows, which give them a decidedly Oriental
+appearance. On most of them were signs displayed in the Chinese
+language. You also see scrolls by the doors of the private houses and
+on the shops. The signs are a study in their bright colours and their
+mythological and fantastic adornments. Yellow is the predominant
+colour, and the dragon is in evidence everywhere. This emblem of the
+Celestial Empire is represented in gorgeous array and with a profusion
+of ornament. A splendid dragon is the sign and trade mark of "Sing Fat
+and Co.," who keep a Chinese and Japanese Bazaar on Dupont Street. On
+their card they give this warning, "Beware of firms infringing on our
+name;" and it seems as if the dragon on the sign would avenge any
+invasion of their rights. The signs are a study, and if you are
+ignorant of the language, you ask your learned guide to interpret them
+for you. He will tell you that Hop Wo does business here as a grocer,
+that Shun Wo is the butcher, that Shan Tong is the tea-merchant, that
+Tin Yuk is the apothecary, and that Wo-Ki sells bric-a-brac. Some of
+the signs, your guide will tell you, are not the real names of the men
+who do business, that they are only mottoes. Wung Wo Shang indicates
+to you that perpetual concord begets wealth, Hip Wo speaks to you of
+brotherly love and harmony, Tin Yuk means a jewel from Heaven, Wa
+Yun is the fountain of flowers, while Man Li suggests thousands of
+profits. Other of the signs relate to the muse. They do not at all
+reveal the business carried on within. The butcher, for example, has
+over his shop such elegant phrases as Great Concord, Constant Faith,
+Abounding Virtue. There are many pawn-brokers who ply their vocation
+assiduously. They tell you of their honest purpose after this
+fashion: "Let each have his due pawn-brokers," and, "Honest profit
+pawn-brokers." In the Chinese restaurant, to which we will go later,
+you will be edified by such sentiments as these,--The Almond-Flower
+Chamber, Chamber of the Odours of Distant Lands, Garden of the Golden
+Valley, Fragrant Tea-Chamber. The apothecary induces you to enter his
+store with inviting signs of this character: Benevolence and Longevity
+Hall, Hall of Everlasting Spring, Hall of Joyful Relief, Hall for
+Multiplying Years. Surely if the American druggist would exhibit such
+sentences as these over his shop he would never suffer for want of
+customers. All are in pursuit of length of years and health; and I
+think the Chinese pharmacist shows his great wisdom in offering to all
+who are suffering from the ills to which flesh is heir a panacea for
+their ailments. It takes the fancy, it is a pleasing conceit for the
+mind, and the mere thought that you are entering Longevity Hall gives
+you fresh courage!
+
+You will find here in Chinatown men of all callings, the labourer who
+is ready to bear any burden you lay on him, the artisan who is skilled
+in his work, the grocer, the clothes' dealer, the merchant, the
+apothecary, the doctor, the tinsmith, the furniture-maker, the
+engraver, the goldsmith, the maker of paper-shrines for idols, the
+barber, the clairvoyant, the fortune-teller, and all others of every
+calling which is useful and brings profit to him who pursues it. But
+we are deeply interested in the men whom we meet. At first view they
+all seem to look alike, you can hardly distinguish one from another.
+They are a study. Look on their solemn faces, sphinx-like in their
+repose and imperturbability. They are a riddle to you. You rarely ever
+hear them laugh. They are like a landscape beneath skies which are
+wanting in the sparkling sunbeams. They seem to you as if they had
+continual sorrow of heart, as if some wrong of past ages had set its
+seal on their features. The Chinaman has very little sense of
+the ludicrous, and he is lacking in the elements of intellectual
+sprightliness and vivacity which lead a Frenchman or an American to
+appreciate and enjoy a sally of wit, a bon mot, or a joke. Life indeed
+is better, and a man can bear his burdens with more ease if he has a
+sense of humour. Some of the great characters in history have often
+come out of the depths with triumph by reason of the spirit within
+them which could perceive the flash of wit and apply its medicine to
+the wounds of the heart. I think it may be said, as a rule, that the
+Asiatic has not the power to appreciate wit and humour like the old
+Greek or the Teuton or the Celt. He is not wanting in his love of
+the beautiful, in his appreciation of poetry, in the vision which
+perceives the flowers blooming by the waters in the desert, and in the
+hearing which catches the sound of the harmonies of his palm-trees
+and lotus flowers, but in the sense or faculty to seize on mirth
+and appropriate her to his service in burden-bearing he is sadly
+deficient. He is but a child in this respect. While the Chinaman has
+inventive faculties and keen intellect and wonderful imitative powers,
+yet in other respects he is behind the progressive races of the world.
+He has made little advance for thousands of years. His isolation, his
+narrow sphere, his simple life, and his religion even, which, while
+some of its maxims and tenets are admirable, still is lacking in the
+knowledge of the true God and in lofty ideals, have had a marked
+effect upon his thoughts and habits and pursuits. His great teacher,
+Confucius, who flourished five centuries before the Christian era
+and who spoke some sublime truths, was nevertheless ignorant of a
+Revelation from heaven and inferior in his grasp of religious truth to
+such sages of Greece as Socrates and Plato. In his system also woman
+is practically a slave. She is simply the minister of man, and
+therefore unable to rear up children, sons who would reflect the
+greatness of soul of a noble motherhood. It has often been remarked
+that great men have had great mothers. I think experience and
+observation will bear out this statement. Glance over the pages of
+history, and eminent examples will rise up before the view. Whence
+spring the Samuels and the Davids, whence a Leonidas and a Markos
+Bozzaris, whence the Scipios and the Gracchi, whence the Augustines
+and the Chrysostoms, whence the Alfreds and the Gladstones, whence the
+Washingtons and the Lincolns, whence the Seaburys and the Doanes,
+and many another? Are they not all hewn from the quarries of a noble
+motherhood? Are they not sprung from the fountain of a womanhood whose
+living streams are clear as crystal and sweet and refreshing? The
+first Chavah, Eve, is rightly styled the mother of all living; and a
+generation or race of men to be living, active, noble in achievement,
+distinguished in virtues, must issue from a well-spring which
+vitalises and beautifies and magnifies the spirit and the intellect,
+as Engannim waters her gardens, and Engedi nourishes her acacias
+and lotus-plants, and Enshemesh reflects the sun's golden beams the
+livelong day. But what, you ask, are the exact teachings of the sage
+Confucius, who influences Chinese society even to this day, with
+regard to woman? Hear him: "Moreover, that you have not in this life
+been born a male is owing to your amount of wickedness, heaped up in
+a previous state of existence, having been both deep and weighty; you
+would not then desire to adorn virtue, to heap up good actions, and
+learn to do well! So that you now have been hopelessly born a female!
+And if you do not this second time specially amend your faults,
+this amount of wickedness of yours will be getting both deeper and
+weightier, so that it is to be feared in the next state of existence,
+even if you should wish for a male's body, yet it will be very
+difficult to get it." Again another saying of Confucius is: "You must
+know that for a woman to be without talent is a virtue on her part."
+With such teaching then ever before them, do you wonder that Chinese
+women do not excel in virtue, and that they are the mothers of a race
+of men who are practically like standing water instead of a flowing
+fountain to refresh the waste places of human life? The teachings of
+Mormonism and Mohammedanism with regard to woman also degrade her and
+rob her of the beautiful crown which her Maker has put upon her head;
+and hence it is that such peoples are not virile and progressive like
+the nations where woman is looked upon as man's helpmeet, where she
+stands upon his right hand as a queen. The Mormons are better in many
+respects than their faith; and if the first generation was hardy
+and aggressive and brave in subduing the desert and changing Rocky
+Mountain wastes into a blooming garden, it was because they had been
+trained in the school of Christianity and had imbibed lessons of
+wisdom at the fountain of a pure faith and inherited from Christian
+fathers and mothers those qualities which are stamped on the soul
+through upright living and a creed that is formulated in true
+doctrine. But Mormonism is dying out, and woman in Utah is receiving
+the rightful place assigned her by her Creator in the work of building
+up the race and perpetuating the virtues and forces of a true manhood.
+The followers of Mohammed are still numerous and powerful, and the
+Religion of the Koran has shown great vitality for centuries. The
+nobility of character, however, which has manifested itself in such
+lives as that of Saladin the Great is the product of other causes than
+the specific teachings and views of Islam respecting domestic life
+and the position and office of woman. The destinies of men have been
+determined often by their environments. We must also bear in mind that
+from time to time, under the sway of the Crescent, different sections
+of the civilised world have been brought under the rule of the
+Sultans, and all that was good and noble in the lives of peoples newly
+incorporated into the faith of the Arabian Prophet has contributed in
+no small degree to the strength of a system which has in its own bosom
+the seeds of decay and which will ultimately become effete and pass
+away. Mohammed Ali, the founder of the present Khedivial house of
+Egypt, had in his veins old Macedonian blood, and his views respecting
+marriage and domestic life, as well as the traditions of his family
+in his old home at Kavala, had much to do with the development of his
+character and his brilliant career; and hence neither he nor others
+like him in the Turkish Empire can be singled out to prove that
+a religion which looks upon woman as an inferior being to man is
+excellent in its tendencies and produces a noble fruitage. What
+Napoleon once said with respect to France, that she needed good
+mothers, is true as regards China. Where woman is held in honour and
+where the domestic virtues are woven into a beautiful chaplet of
+spring-time blossoms to bedeck her brow, there you will find good and
+great men. Our own nation is an example of this. To regenerate
+China then, to improve the morals of Chinatown in San Francisco, or
+Chinatown in New York where there are between seven and eight thousand
+sons and daughters of the Flowery Kingdom, you must create pure homes,
+and to do this you must first of all sweeten them with the precepts of
+the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Confucius will fail you. The Son of God
+will reform you and save you! Such thoughts and reflections as these
+naturally sprang up in my mind in my walks through Chinatown. I saw
+its people on every hand. Sometimes they were in twos, again in groups
+of a half a dozen or more. They scarcely noticed us as we walked by
+them; they showed no curiosity to observe us, but went on their way as
+though intent on one object. They moved about like automatons, as if
+they were a piece of machinery; and such as were at work in shops
+heeded us not even when we stood over them and watched them as they
+handled their tools. It was work, work. They were doing their masters'
+bidding like the genii of the lamp; and in the glare of the light in
+which they wrought on their bench or at their stand the workers in
+gold and silver, the makers of ornaments and jewelry, were like
+some strange beings from another world. They work to the point of
+endurance. They have their amusements, their holidays, as the Chinese
+New Year which comes in February, their processions from time to time,
+but their great indulgence is in the use of opium. Once or twice
+a month the ordinary labourer or workman gives himself up to its
+seductive charms, to its power more fatal to his manhood than
+intoxicating drinks taken to excess. The Chinaman is so stolid and
+impassive that it is hard to arouse his wrath. He will bear insults
+without a murmur for a long time, but in the end he will be stung into
+madness and he will give force to all his pent up fires of hate
+that have slumbered like a volcano. He may wait long without having
+punished his oppressor, but he will bide his time. So it was with the
+Boxers in China whose story is so painfully fresh in the memories of
+the great legations of the world in Pekin.
+
+The men and women of Chinatown dress very nearly like each other;
+though you do not meet many women. The Chinaman wears a blouse of blue
+cotton material or other cheap, manufactured goods. This is without a
+collar, and is usually hooked over the breast. There are no buttons.
+Wealthy Chinamen, and there are many such, indulge in richer garments.
+As a rule they have adopted the American felt hat of a brownish
+colour. The shoe has the invariable wooden sole with uppers of cotton
+or some kind of ordinary cloth. The hair is the object of their chief
+attention, however, in the making up of their toilet. It is worn in a
+queue or pigtail fashion as it is commonly styled. It is their
+glory, however, this long, black, glossy braid. It is the Chinaman's
+distinguishing badge. It gives him dignity in the presence of his
+countrymen. If cut off he feels dishonoured. He can never go back to
+the home of his ancestors, but must remain in exile. He wears this
+mark of his nationality either hanging down his back or else coiled
+about the head. When at work the latter style is preferred, as it is
+then out of the way of his movements. Some of the men whom you meet
+have fine intellectual heads. The merchants and scholars whom I saw
+answer to this description. As a rule they can all read and write.
+They have a love of knowledge to a certain point, and a book is prized
+by them. The great desire of the Chinamen who reach our shores is to
+learn the English language. They know it gives them an advantage. It
+is the avenue to success. Sometimes they will become members of an
+American Mission or Bible-class in order to learn the language. They
+still, however, have their mental reservations with regard to their
+native Joss-houses and worship. But they are not singular in this
+respect. Mohammedans and Jews in the East allow their children to
+attend schools where English is taught, because with the knowledge of
+this they can the more readily find employment among tourists and in
+places of exchange. This is particularly true in Egypt and in Syria.
+But the Chinaman in his attempt to learn the Anglo-Saxon tongue finds
+great difficulties. Very many speak only what is called "Pidgin" or
+"Pigeon" English, that is Business English. Business on the lips of
+the new learner becomes "Pidgin." They like to end a word with ee as
+"muchee," and they find it next to impossible to frame the letter R.
+For example the word _rice_ becomes _lice_ in a Chinaman's mouth,
+and a Christian is a Chlistian, while an American is turned into an
+Amelican. Of course this does not apply to the educated Chinaman who
+is polished and gifted in speech as is the case with any well-trained
+Chinese clergyman or such as minister Wu Ting-Fang in Washington.
+
+All debts among the Chinese are paid once a year, that is when their
+New Year comes around in our month of February. There are three ways
+in which they may cancel their debts. First, they pay them in money,
+if they are able, when accounts are cast up between creditor and
+debtor. If in the second place they are unable to pay what they owe
+they assign all their goods and effects to their creditors, and then
+the debtor gets a clean bill and so starts out anew with a clear
+conscience for another year. This in few words is the Chinese
+"Bankrupt Law." But, in the third place, if a man has no assets, if he
+be entirely impoverished, and cannot pay his debts, he considers it
+a matter of honour to kill himself. Death pays all debts for him,
+settles all scores, and he is not looked upon with aversion or
+execrated. Even Chinese women have resorted to this extreme method of
+settling their accounts. But what of their settlement with their Maker
+who gave them life, who holds all men responsible for that gift, who
+expects us to use the boon aright? A Chinaman does not value life with
+the same feeling and estimate as an Anglo-Saxon. Should he fail in any
+great purpose, should he meet with defeat in some cherished plan, he
+will seek refuge in the bosom of the grave; he will voluntarily return
+to his ancestors whom he has worshipped as gods. In the late war
+between China and Japan, in which China was vanquished, some of her
+generals committed suicide. It presents, alas, a degenerate side of
+human nature. It is most pathetic. Better far to live under the smart
+of defeat and bear its shame, carry the cross, endure the stings of
+conscience, and meet the frowns of the world, than flee from the
+path of duty, than dishonour our manhood. The greatest victory is
+to conquer one's proud heart, and to suffer, and do God's will. The
+teachings of Christ show us the value of life, tell us how to live,
+how to die, how to win the divine approbation. To Him we bow and not
+to Confucius.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+A CHINESE NEWSPAPER, LITTLE FEET, AND AN OPIUM JOINT
+
+In Chinatown--A Chinese Editor--His Views of Chinese Life--A Daily
+Paper and the Way in Which it is Printed--A Night School--The Mission
+of the English Language--A Widow and Her Children--Pair of Small
+Shoes--Binding of the Feet and Custom--Mrs. Wu Ting-Fang on Small
+Feet--Maimed and Veiled Women--The Shulamite's Feet--An Opium-joint--A
+Wretched Chinaman--Fascination of Opium--History and Cultivation
+of the Poppy--The East India Company and the Opium War--An Opium
+Farmer--How the Old Man Smoked--De Quincey and His Experiences--"I
+Will Sleep No More."
+
+
+As my guide and I went forth to visit the places of interest in
+Chinatown, we directed our steps first of all to the Chinese newspaper
+office. This is located at No. 804 Sacramento street, corner of Dupont
+street. On being ushered in I met with a cordial welcome from the
+managing editor, Mr. Ng Poon Chew, who, before I bade him good-bye,
+exchanged cards with me. He, I learned, is a Christian minister and
+is the pastor of a Chinese church in Los Angeles. His literary
+attainments and business capacity peculiarly fit him for his work
+on the Chinese paper, and he is held in high esteem by Chinamen
+generally. He is a man about four feet five inches in stature, and
+possibly forty years old. It is hard, however, to tell a Chinaman's
+age, and so he may be five or ten years older. He is what you would
+call a handsome man, with a fine head and a beaming countenance. He
+showed great warmth in his greeting--and this was the more remarkable
+as the Chinaman is generally cool and impassive. He was dressed in the
+Chinese fashion with the traditional queue hanging down behind. He
+presented altogether a striking appearance, and you would single
+him out from a crowd as a man of more than ordinary cultivation and
+ability. He talked English fluently, and it was a pleasure to listen
+to him. He has well defined views regarding China and other countries.
+When questioned about the Flowery Kingdom, he said that the people
+were very conservative, that they do not wish for change, and that
+Chinese women dress as they did thousands of years ago. He remarked,
+however, that there is a younger generation of Chinamen who long for
+a change and for reform in methods, I suppose after the manner of the
+so-called "Young Turks" in the Sultan's dominions. They would like the
+improvements of European and American life, and would shake off the
+trammels of the past to a large extent, just as Japan has shaken off
+the sleep of centuries and is marching towards greatness among the
+strong nations of the world. With the modern appliances and advances
+in civilisation and armies well drilled like those of England or the
+United States of America, and with great war-ships well manned, they
+would be able to meet the world and to defend themselves and repel
+every invader from their country. He says the Chinese have good
+memories, that they will never forget the manner in which opium came
+to them, and the opium war of 1839. When he was a child he was taught
+to pray to a wooden god, and he had to rise as early as 3:30 A.M. to
+go to school to study the teachings of Confucius. As the custom is to
+go so early in the morning to school, the children sometimes drop to
+sleep by the way as they are hastening on. Chinamen will tell you that
+they have the religion which is best for them. This is the doctrine of
+Confucius; but Confucius, while a great scholar, was not a saint. He
+taught men "to improve their pocket," but did not teach them much
+about their soul. In order to see the real effect of the teachings of
+Confucius, you must go to China. Confucius may make men whom you may
+admire, but he cannot make men whom you can respect. The religion of
+Confucius is dreary and is lacking in the warmth and blessing which
+come from a belief in the Bible.
+
+It is most certainly refreshing to hear this learned Chinaman talking
+and giving his impressions and opinions about matters of such vital
+importance. Ng Poon Chew, at my request, gave me the business card of
+the newspaper. This states that the paper, which is published daily
+in Chinese, is called "Chung Sai Yat Po," and that it has the largest
+circulation of any Chinese paper published outside of the Chinese
+Empire. The card further tells us that "this paper is the organ of
+the commercial element in America and is the best medium for Chinese
+trade." In addition to the daily issue of the newspaper, "English and
+Chinese Job Printing" is done in the office. The work of interpreting
+the English and Chinese languages is carried on here. Mr. Ng Poon Chew
+spoke with evident pride about his paper, and informed me that he gave
+a daily account of the proceeding's of the General Convention, then in
+session in Trinity Church, San Francisco, in the "Chung Sai Yat Po."
+
+The editing of a Chinese newspaper is no easy matter. The printing of
+the paper is difficult and requires great skill and patience. There
+are, for example, forty thousand word-signs, all different, in the
+Chinese language, and to represent these signs there must be separate,
+movable type-pieces. It is said that it takes a long period of time to
+distribute the type and lay out "the case." The typesetter must know
+the word by sight to tell its meaning, otherwise he will make serious
+blunders. Then it is a hard matter to find intelligent typesetters.
+The editor, too, must be a man of business. The paper is watched by
+spies of the Chinese Government, and if the editor expresses himself
+in any manner antagonistic to the Emperor or the Dowager Empress or
+any of the viceroys of the provinces, his head would be cut off if he
+ever ventured to set foot in China. There is another obstacle in the
+way of a Chinese newspaper of liberal views, like the "Chung Sai Yat
+Po." It cannot get its type from China, as the Government is opposed
+to every reform paper. The type for such a journal is cast in a
+Japanese foundry in Yokohama. It is said that about ten thousand
+word-signs are used in the printing of the newspaper. The type-case is
+usually long, for the purpose of allowing all the type-pieces to be
+spread out. The type runs up and down in a column, and you read from
+right to left as in Hebrew or other Shemitic languages. The characters
+are as old in form as the days of Confucius. The "Chung Sai Yat Po"
+has a very large circulation and finds its way to the islands of the
+Pacific Ocean and into China.
+
+From the newspaper office we wended our way to a little Baptist
+mission chapel for the Chinese. There were about forty persons
+congregated here, among them some ten or twelve Americans who were
+teaching the Chinese the English language. This night school is
+popular with young, ambitious Chinamen, for when they learn our
+language it is much easier for them to obtain work in stores and
+offices, and even as house servants. The books used had the Chinese
+words on one page and the English sentences opposite. Sometimes
+converts to Christianity are made through the medium of the night
+school, but it takes time and patience to win a Chinaman from
+the religion of Confucius. It is worth the labour, however. The
+difficulties in the mastery of English are a great barrier to
+conversions. Nevertheless they do occur. A Chinaman is readily reached
+through his own language. Hence the importance of raising up native
+teachers of the Gospel who can speak to the hearts as well as to the
+understanding of their countrymen. As we observed in the foregoing
+chapter, in the Orient, as in Syria and Egypt, Jews and Mohammedans
+sometimes allow their children to attend the English schools, and to a
+large extent from a worldly motive. The Syrian or Arab who can speak
+English is in demand as a dragoman, an accountant, an office clerk in
+the bazaar, or a camp-servant or boatman. Indeed a great revolution is
+now taking place all through the East. Nearly all the young Egyptians
+can talk English, and this is the first step towards their conversion
+to the faith of the Gospel. When they are able to read the books of
+the Christians in the English, they are led to look favourably on
+the Church. They catch the spirit of belief in Jesus Christ from the
+Christian tourist. They lose the narrowness and bigotry which the
+mosque or the synagogue fosters, and in time they examine the claims
+of a religion which has built up the great nations of Europe and
+America. The future has in store great developments for the Church in
+Palestine and the old land of the Pharaohs through the agency of the
+English schools, and I believe the readiest way in which to convert
+the Chinese people, whether in Chinatown in San Francisco, or in China
+itself, is to teach them our language and give them access to the Holy
+Scriptures in our noble tongue. Our Church schools in China are doing
+a great work in this respect. So is St. John's College in Shanghai.
+They should all be liberally supported with offerings from America,
+and what we sow in this generation will be reaped in the next, a
+splendid harvest for Christ and His Church!
+
+After leaving the night school our guide conducted us up narrow stairs
+to the rooms occupied by a Chinese woman. She was a widow with four
+children, daughters, and rather petite in form, and lacking the
+physical development and beauty of the Caucasian race. They seemed shy
+and timid, for Chinese women are not accustomed to the society of men.
+In fact there is among them no such home-life as we are familiar with.
+They were dressed in a measure after the fashion of our girls, and had
+long, black hair. The mother said a few sentences in broken English,
+and welcomed us with an air of sincerity, though not a little
+embarrassed. She was a woman of about forty years, and from the
+expression of her face had evidently met with trials. Brought over to
+San Francisco from Canton when a young girl, she had married Shan Tong
+with all the ceremony and merry-making which characterise a Chinese
+wedding, with its processions and feasting and the noise of its
+firecrackers; but some four or five years ago death claimed her
+husband, and she was left to do battle alone, while he was laid to
+rest in the Chinese burying-ground at the west end of Laurel Hill
+Cemetery. But she did not suffer from want, for Chinamen are kind
+to the needy of their own race. Among the objects which excited our
+curiosity were the tiny shoes of the small-footed woman. These were
+not quite three inches in length, and looked as if they were more
+suited for a doll's feet than for a full grown woman's. Yes, here was
+the evidence of a barbarous custom which deprives a human being of one
+of nature's good gifts, so necessary to our comfort and happiness.
+Think what you would be, if, through infirmity, you were not at
+liberty to go hither and thither at will like the young hart or
+gazelle! We grieve naturally if our children's feet are deformed or
+misshapen at birth, but what a crime it is to destroy the form and
+strength of the foot as God has made it! It is true that the Manchu
+women in China rejoice in the feet which the beneficent Creator has
+given them. The Dowager Empress--of whom we have read so much of late,
+and who rules China with an iron rod, has feet like any other woman;
+but millions of her countrywomen have been robbed of nature's
+endowment through a foolish and wicked custom which has prevailed in
+China from time immemorial. The feet are bound when the child is born,
+and they are never allowed to grow as God designed, as the flower
+expands into beauty from the bud. Chinese women realise that it is
+foolish, that it is a deformity, but it is the "custom," and custom
+prevails. It is like the laws of the Medes and Persians which alter
+not. Women are powerless under it. It is in vain to a large extent
+that they oppose it. There is in China an Anti-foot-binding League,
+which receives the support of men of prominence. Even centuries ago
+imperial edicts were issued against it, but custom still rules. It
+was Montaigne who declared that "custom" ought to be followed simply
+because it is custom. A poor reason indeed. There should be a better
+argument for the doing of what is contrary to reason and nature.
+Nature is a wise mother, and she bestows on us no member of the body
+that is unnecessary. The thought of her fostering care was well
+expressed by the old Greeks who lived an out-door life, in their
+personification of Mother Earth under the creation of their Demeter,
+perfect in form and beautiful in expression and noble in action. This
+is far above the conceptions of nature or of a presiding genius over
+our lives, taking into account social order and marriage vows, which
+we find in Chinese literature or mythology. It is not difficult to
+perceive the reason why the Greeks, who rule the realms of philosophy
+and art and literature to-day, after the lapse of many centuries,
+are the superior people. Well does that master-mind, Shakespeare,
+characterise evil custom:
+
+  "That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat,
+  Of habits devil."
+
+But a better day is coming for Chinese women. Wherever Christianity
+has touched them in the past they have been uplifted and benefited.
+The sun seems now to rise in greater effulgence on the Kingdom of the
+Yellow Dragon. The wretched custom of dwarfing and destroying the feet
+of a child whose misfortune, according to Confucius, it is to be
+born a female, is giving way under pressure from contact with the
+enlightened nations of the world. The teachings of the Christian
+Church are having their salutary effect and Chinamen are beginning to
+learn the value of a woman's life from the Biblical standpoint, and
+the daughters of the Flowery Kingdom will, as time goes on, become
+more and more like the polished corners of the Temple, or the
+Caryatides supporting the entablature of the Erechtheum at Athens. It
+is Madame Wu Ting-Fang, wife of the Chinese Minister at Washington,
+who has recently returned from a visit to her old home, who says: "The
+first penetrating influence of exterior civilisation on the customs of
+my country has touched the conditions of women. The emancipation of
+woman in China means, first of all, the liberation of her feet, and
+this is coming. Indeed, it has already come in a measure, for the
+style in feet has changed. Wee bits of feet, those no longer than an
+infant's, are no longer the fashion. When I went back home I found
+that the rigid binding and forcing back of the feet was largely a
+thing of the past. China, with other nations, has come to regard that
+practice as barbarous, but the small feet, those that enable a woman
+to walk a little and do not inconvenience her in getting about the
+house, are still favoured by the Chinese ladies."
+
+The custom of binding and destroying the feet, no doubt, arose from
+the low views entained by Chinese sages concerning woman, and from
+a lack of confidence in her sense of honour and virtue. She must be
+maimed so that she cannot go about at will, so she shall be completely
+under the eye of her husband, held as it were in fetters. It is a sad
+comment on Chinese domestic morality, it fosters the very evil it
+seeks to cure, it destroys all home life in the best sense. The veiled
+women of the East are very much in the same position. If a stranger,
+out of curiosity or by accident, look on the face of a Mohammedan
+wife, it might lead to her repudiation by her jealous husband, or the
+offender might be punished for his innocent glance. The writer recalls
+how at Hebron, in Palestine, he was cautioned by the dragoman, when
+going up a narrow street to the Mosque of Machpelah, where he had to
+pass veiled women, not to look at them or to seem to notice them,
+as the men were very fanatical and might do violence to an unwary
+tourist. The Chinese women of small feet, or rather no feet at all,
+walk, or attempt to walk, in a peculiar way. It is as if one were on
+stilts. The feet are nothing but stumps, while the ankles are large,
+almost unnatural in their development. It is indeed a great deformity.
+The feet are shrunken to less size than an infant's; but they have not
+the beauty of a baby's feet, which have in them great possibilities
+and a world of suggestion and romance and poetry. If the Chinese
+custom had prevailed among the ancient Hebrew people, think you that
+King Solomon in singing of the graces of the Shulamite, who represents
+the Church mystically, would ever have exclaimed,--"How beautiful
+are thy feet with shoes, O prince's daughter!" We should have lost,
+moreover, much that is noble in art, and the poetic creations of Greek
+sculptors would never have delighted the eye nor enchained the fancy.
+
+In our perambulations about Chinatown, we must next visit an
+opium-joint. This mysterious place was situated in a long, rambling
+building through which we had to move cautiously so as not to stumble
+into some pit or dangerous hole or trap-door. Here were no electric
+lights to drive away the gloom, here no gas-jets to show us where we
+were treading, nothing but an occasional lamp dimly burning. Yet we
+went on as if drawn by a magic spell. At last we were ushered into a
+room poorly furnished. It was not more than twelve feet square, and in
+the corner was an apology for a bed. On this was stretched an old man
+whose face was sunken, whose eyes were lusterless, whose hand was long
+and thin and bony, and whose voice was attenuated and pitched in a
+falsetto key. The guide said that this old Chinaman was sixty-eight
+years of age, and that he had had a life of varied experience. He was
+a miner by profession, but had spent all his earnings long ago, and
+was now an object of charity as well as of pity. Indeed he was the
+very embodiment of misery, a wretched, woebegone, human being! He had
+lost one arm in an accident during his mining days. Chinamen in the
+thirst for gold had mining claims as well as Anglo-Saxons. This desire
+for the precious metal seems to be universal. All men more or less
+love gold; and for its acquisition they will undergo great hardship,
+face peril, risk their lives. This aged Chinaman for whom there was no
+future except to join his ancestors in another life, was now a pauper
+notwithstanding all his quest for the treasures of the mines; and his
+chief solace, if it be comfort indeed to have the senses benumbed
+periodically, or daily, and then wake up to the consciousness of loss
+and with a feeling of despair betimes, was in his opium pipe, which he
+smoked fifty times a day at the cost of half a dollar, the offering
+of charity, the dole received from his pitying countrymen or the
+interested traveller who might come to his forlorn abode. But what
+a fascination the opium drug has for the Chinaman, and not for him
+alone, but for children of other races--for men and women who, when
+under its spell, will sell honour and sacrifice all that is dear in
+life, and even forego the prospect and the blessed hope of entering at
+last into the bliss of the heavenly world! But what is opium, what its
+parentage and history? The Greeks will tell you it is their opion or
+opos, the juice of the poppy, and the botanist will point out the
+magic flower for you as the Papaver Somniferum, whose home was
+originally in the north of Europe and in Western Asia; but now, just
+as the tribes of the earth have spread out into many lands, so has the
+poppy which has brought much misery as well as blessing to men,
+found its way into various quarters of the globe, particularly those
+countries which are favoured with sunny skies. It is cultivated in
+Turkey, India, Persia, Egypt, Algeria and Australia, as well as in
+China. I now recall vividly the beautiful poppy fields at Assiut,
+Esneh and Kenneh, by the banks of the Nile, in which such subtle
+powers were sleeping potent for ill or good as employed by man for
+deadening his faculties or soothing pain in reasonable measure. These
+flowers were of the reddish kind. In China they have the white, red
+and purple varieties, which, as you gaze on them, seem to set the
+fields aglow with fire and attract your gaze as if you were enchained
+to the spot by an unseen power. The seeds are sown in November and
+December, in rows which are eighteen inches apart, and four-fifths
+of the opium used in China is the home-product, though it was not
+so formerly. In March or April the poppy flowers according to the
+climate, the soil, and the location. The opium is garnered in April or
+May, and prepared for the market. The Chinese merchant values most of
+all the Shense drug, while the Ynnan and the Szechuen drugs take next
+rank. The opium is generally made into flat cakes and wrapped up in
+folds of white paper. It is said that it was introduced into China in
+the reign of Taitsu, between the years A.D. 1280 and 1295; but it is
+worthy of note that up to the year 1736 it was imported only in small
+quantities and employed simply for its medicinal properties, as a cure
+for diarrhoea, dysentery, and fevers, hemorrhage and other ills. It
+was in the year 1757 that the monopoly of the cultivation of the poppy
+in India passed into the hands of the East India Company through the
+victory of Lord Clive over the Great Mogul of Bengal at Plassey; and
+from this time the importation of the drug into China became a matter
+of great profit financially. In 1773 the whole quantity imported was
+only two hundred chests. In 1776 it had increased to one thousand
+chests, while in 1790 it leaped up to four thousand and fifty-four
+chests. The Chinese Emperor, Keaking, becoming alarmed at its growing
+use and its pernicious effect when eaten or smoked, forbade its
+importation, and passed laws punishing persons who made use of it
+otherwise than medicinally, and the extreme penalty was sometimes
+transportation, and sometimes death. Yet the trade increased, and
+in the decade between 1820 and 1830 the importation was as high as
+sixteen thousand, eight hundred and seventy-seven chests. The evil
+became so great that in 1839 a royal proclamation was put forth
+threatening English opium ships with confiscation if they did not keep
+out of Chinese waters. This was not heeded, and then Lin, the Chinese
+Commissioner, gave orders to destroy twenty thousand, two hundred
+and ninety-one chests of opium, each containing 149-1/3 pounds, the
+valuation of which was $10,000,000. Still the work of smuggling went
+on and the result was what is known as the Opium War, which was ended
+in 1842 by the treaty of Nanking. China was forced by Great Britain to
+pay $21,000,000 indemnity, to cede in perpetuity to England the city
+of Hong Kong, and to give free access to British ships entering
+the ports of Canton, Amoy, Foochoofoo, Ningpo and Shanghai. The
+importation of opium from India is still carried on--but the quantity
+is not so great as formerly, owing to the cultivation of the plant in
+China. The Hong Kong government has an opium farm, for which to-day it
+receives a rental of $15,500 per month. The farmer sells on an average
+from eight to ten _tins_ of opium daily, the tins being worth about
+$150 each. His entire receipts from his sales of the drug are about
+$45,000 per month. This opium farmer is well known to be the largest
+smuggler of opium into China; and not without reason does Lord Charles
+Beresford, in his book "The Break-up of China," say: "Thus,
+indirectly the Hong Kong government derives a revenue by fostering
+an illegitimate trade with a neighbouring and friendly Power, which
+cannot be said to redound to the credit of the British Government. It
+is in direct opposition to the sentiments and tradition of the laws of
+the British Empire." It was here in Chinatown, in San Francisco, that
+I was brought face to face with the havoc that is made through the
+opium trade and the use of the pernicious drug in eating and smoking.
+I was told that Europeans and Americans sometimes sought the
+opium-joints for the purpose of indulgence in the vice of smoking.
+Even women were known to make use of it in this way. The old man whom
+I visited was lying on his left side, with his head slightly raised
+on a hard pillow covered with faded leather. He took the pipe in his
+right hand, the other, as I have already said, having been cut off in
+the mines. Then he laid down the pipe by his side with the stem near
+his mouth. The next movement was to take a kind of long rod, called a
+dipper, with a sharp end and a little flattened. This he dipped in
+the opium which had the consistency of thick molasses. He twisted the
+dipper round and then held the drop which adhered to it over the lamp,
+which was near him. He wound the dipper round and round until the
+opium was roasted and had a brown colour. He then thrust the end of
+the dipper with the prepared drug into the opening of the pipe, which
+was somewhat after the Turkish style with its long stem. He next held
+the bowl of the pipe over the lamp until the opium frizzled. Then
+putting the stem of the pipe in his mouth he inhaled the smoke, and
+almost immediately exhaled it through the mouth and nostrils. While
+smoking he removed the opium, going through the same process as
+before, and it all took about fifteen minutes. What the old man's
+feelings were he did not tell us, but he seemed very contented, as if
+then he cared for nothing, as if he had no concern for the world and
+its trials. But one must read the graphic pages of Thomas De Quincey
+in his "Confessions of an English Opium Eater," in order to know what
+are the joys and what the torments of him who is addicted to the use
+of the pernicious drug. It was while De Quincey was in Oxford that he
+came under its tyranny. At first taken to allay neuralgic pain, and
+then resorted to as a remedy on all occasions of even the slightest
+suffering, it wove its chain around him like a merciless master who
+puts his servant in bonds. But though given to its use all his life
+afterwards, in later years he took it moderately. Still he was its
+slave. A man of marvellous genius, a master of the English tongue,
+he had not full mastery of his own appetite; and one of such talent,
+bound Andromeda-like to the rock of his vice, ready to be devoured
+in the sea of his perplexity by what is worse than the dragon of the
+story, he deserves our pity, nay, even our tears. He tells us how
+he was troubled with tumultuous dreams and visions, how he was a
+participant in battles, strifes; and how agonies seized his soul, and
+sudden alarms came upon him, and tempests, and light and darkness;
+how he saw forms of loved ones who vanished in a moment; how he heard
+"everlasting farewells;" and sighs as if wrung from the caves of hell
+reverberated again and again with "everlasting farewells." "And I
+awoke in struggles, and cried aloud, 'I will sleep no more!'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+MUSIC, GAMBLING, EATING, THEATRE-GOING
+
+In Chinatown--A Musician's Shop--A Secret Society--Gambling Houses--"The
+Heathen Chinee"--Fortune-telling--The Knife in the Fan-Case--A Boarding
+House--A Lesson for Landlords--A Kitchen--A Goldsmith's Shop--The
+Restaurant--Origin of the Tea-Plant--What a Chinaman Eats--The Tobacco
+or Opium Pipe--A Safe with Eight Locks--The Theatre--Women by
+Themselves--The Play--The Stage--The Actors--The Orchestra and the
+Music--The Audience--A Death on the Stage--The Theatre a Gathering
+Place--No Women Actors--A Wise Provision--Temptations--Real Acting--Men
+the Same Everywhere.
+
+
+The reader will now accompany us to a musician's shop in our
+wanderings through Chinatown. This is located in a basement and is a
+room about fifteen feet wide and some twenty feet deep. This son of
+Jubal from the Flowery Kingdom was about fifty-five years old and a
+very good-natured man. He received us with a smile, and when he was
+requested by the guide to play for us he sat down before an instrument
+somewhat like the American piano, called _Yong Chum_. The music was of
+a plaintive character, and was lacking in the melody of a Broadwood
+or a Steinway. Then he played on another instrument which resembled
+a bandore or banjo and was named _Sem Yim_. Afterwards he took up a
+Chinese flute and played a tune, which was out of the ordinary and
+was withal of a cheerful nature. He then showed us something that was
+striking and peculiar--a Chinese fiddle with two strings. The bow
+strings were moved beneath the fiddle strings. The music was by no
+means such as to charm one, and you could not for a moment imagine
+that you were listening to a maestro playing on a Cremona. The
+Chinese, while they have a reputation for philosophy after the example
+of their great men, like Confucius and Mencius, and while there are
+poets of merit among them like Su and Lin, yet can not be said to
+excel in musical composition and rendering. The tune with which our
+Chinese friend sought to entertain us on his fiddle was, "A Hot Time
+in the Old Town To-night." He thought this would be agreeable to our
+American ears. Meanwhile I glanced around this music-room and among
+other things I saw, and which interested me, were several effigies of
+men, characters in Chinese history. Some were no doubt true to life
+while others were caricatures of the persons whom they represented. It
+might be styled an Eden Musée.
+
+Leaving the musician's, after giving him a suitable fee for
+entertaining us, we turned our footsteps towards the _Chee Kung Tong_.
+This is a Chinese secret society. The Chinese are wont to associate
+themselves together, even if they do not mingle much with men of
+other nations. They have their gatherings for social purposes and
+for improvement and pastime, and, like the Anglo-Saxon and the Latin
+races, they have their mystic signs and passwords. Of course we were
+not permitted to enter the _Chee Kung Tong_ Hall, however much we
+desired to cross its mysterious threshold. The door was well guarded,
+and Chinamen passing in had to give assurance that they were entitled
+to the privilege. On the night when the detective from Police
+Headquarters accompanied us we made an attempt to enter a Chinese
+gambling house. The entrance even to this was well guarded; although
+the sentinel unwittingly left the door open for a moment as a Chinaman
+was passing in. The detective seeing his opportunity went in boldly
+and bade us to follow him. In a few moments all was confusion. We
+heard hurrying feet in the adjoining room, and then excited men
+appeared at the head of the passage way and waved their arms to and
+fro while they talked rapidly in high tones. Outside already some
+fifty men had collected together, and these were also talking and
+gesticulating wildly. The detective then said to us that it would be
+wise to retreat and leave the place lest we might meet with violence.
+We did so, but the uproar among the Chinese did not subside for some
+time. We pitied the poor sentinel who had allowed us to slip in, for
+we knew that he would be severely punished after our departure. The
+Chinese are noted for their gambling propensities, and there are
+many gambling houses in Chinatown. This vice is one of their great
+pastimes, and whenever they are not engaged in business they devote
+themselves either to gambling, the amusements of the theatre, the
+pleasures of the restaurant, or the seductive charms of the opium
+pipe.
+
+Later in my saunterings I went into a kind of restaurant, where I saw
+a number of Chinese men and boys playing cards and dominoes and dice.
+They went on with the games as if they were oblivious to us. I noticed
+there were Chinese coins of small value on the tables, and some of the
+players were apparently winning while others were losing. The latter,
+however, gave no indication that they were in the least degree
+disappointed. Of course, as a rule they play after their own fashion,
+having their own games and methods. Minister Wu, of Washington, when
+asked recently if he liked our American games, replied that he did
+not understand any of them. No doubt this is true of the majority of
+Chinamen in the United States. In thinking of the Chinese and gambling
+one always recalls Bret Harte's "Plain Language From Truthful James of
+Table Mountain," popularly known as "The Heathen Chinee," one of the
+best humorous poems in the English language. You can fairly see the
+merry eyes of the author of the "Argonauts of '49" dancing with
+pleasure as he describes the game of cards between "Truthful James,"
+"Bill Nye" and "Ah Sin."
+
+  "Which we had a small game,
+    And Ah Sin took a hand;
+  It was euchre: the same
+    He did not understand;
+  But he smiled as he sat by the table
+  With a smile that was childlike and bland.
+
+  "Yet the cards they were stacked
+    In a way that I grieve,
+  And my feelings were shocked
+    At the state of Nye's sleeve,
+  Which was stuffed full of aces and bowers,
+  And the same with intent to deceive.
+
+  "But the hands that were played
+    By that heathen Chinee,
+  And the points that he made.
+    Were quite frightful to see--
+  Till at last he put down the right bower,
+  Which the same Nye had dealt unto me.
+
+  "Then I looked up at Nye,
+    And he gazed upon me:
+  And he rose with a sigh,
+    And said, 'Can this be?
+  We are ruined by Chinee cheap labour'--
+  And he went for that heathen Chinee."
+
+There are all kinds of jugglers in Chinatown and among them are
+numerous fortune-tellers. This kind of pastime is as old as the human
+race, and you find the man who undertakes to reveal to you the secrets
+of the future among all peoples. The Orientals are always ready to
+listen to the "neby" or the necromancer or the fakir or the wandering
+minstrel, who improvises for you and sings for you the good things
+which are in store for you. We see this tendency among our own people
+who would have their destiny pointed out by means of a pack of cards,
+by the reading of the palm of the hand, in the grounds in the tea-cup,
+and by other signs. It was with some interest then that we glanced
+at the mystic words and signs which adorned the entrance to Sam Wong
+Yung's fortune-teller's place.
+
+Passing on, we next visited a hardware shop, where you could purchase
+various kinds of Chinese cutlery. Among other things that attracted my
+attention was a simple-looking Chinese fan, apparently folded up. On
+examining it I found that inside of the fan-case was a sharp knife or
+blade like a wide dagger. This could be carried in an unsuspecting
+manner into the midst of a company of men, and in a moment, if you
+had in your breast the wicked spirit of revenge, your enemy could be
+weltering in his life blood at your feet. It suggested all kinds of
+tragedies, and no doubt its invention had behind it some treacherous
+impulse. The writer ventured to purchase it, but he hastens to
+announce to his friends that his purposes are good and innocent.
+Though in the same category as the sword or dagger hidden in a
+walking-stick or a concealed weapon, this bloodthirsty knife will
+repose harmlessly in its fan-case like a sleeping babe in his cradle.
+
+A Chinese boarding house next claimed our inspection. It was rather a
+forbidding place, but no doubt the Chinaman was well content with its
+accommodations. It was a long, rambling structure, and it seemed to me
+as if I were going through an underground passage in walking from room
+to room. The various halls were narrow, indeed so narrow that two
+persons meeting in them could not without difficulty pass each other.
+The beds, which brought a dollar a month, were one above another in
+tiers or recesses in the walls. Generally a curtain of a reddish hue
+depended in front of them. They reminded one of the berths in a ship
+or of the repositories of the dead in the Roman Catacombs. Two
+hundred and twenty-five persons were lodged in this dark, mysterious
+labyrinth. In another house there were five hundred and fifty people
+lodged in seventy-five rooms. Possibly the owners of tenement houses
+in our large cities, who crowd men and women into a narrow space
+and through unpitying agents reap a rich harvest regardless of the
+sufferings of their fellow-beings, have been taking lessons from the
+landlords of Chinatown. I said to myself, as I went to and fro through
+these narrow passages, dimly lighted with a lamp, and the lights were
+few and far between, if a fire should break out, at midnight, when all
+are wrapt in slumber, what a holocaust would be here! And whose would
+the sin and the shame be? There are good and ample fire-appliances for
+the protection of the city, but the poor Chinamen hemmed in, as in a
+dark prison-house, would surely be suffocated by smoke or be consumed
+in the flames. When the old theatre was burned down, twenty-five men,
+and probably more, perished, although there were means of escape from
+this building. I was told that the wood from which the largest hotel
+in Chinatown, its Palace hotel so to speak, was constructed in the
+early days, was brought around Cape Horn, and cost $350 per thousand
+feet. This was before saw-mills were erected in the forests among the
+foothills and on the slopes of the Sierras. The kitchen of the big
+boarding house was a novelty. It was nothing in any respect like the
+well-appointed kitchens of our hotels with their great ranges and open
+fire-places where meats may be roasted slowly on the turnspit. On one
+side of the kitchen there was a kind of stone-parapet about two feet
+and a half high, and on the top of this there were eight fire-places.
+As the Chinamen cook their own food there might be as many as eight
+men here at one time. I asked the guide if they ever quarreled. His
+answer was significant. "No! and it would be difficult to bring eight
+men of any other nationality together in such close proximity without
+differences arising and contentions taking place; but the Chinamen
+never trouble each other." There was only one man cooking at such a
+late hour as that in which we visited the kitchen, about half-past ten
+o'clock at night. He used charcoal, and as the coals were fanned the
+fire looked like that of a forge in a blacksmith's shop.
+
+On our way to the Chinese Restaurant we stepped into a goldsmith's
+shop. There were a few customers present, and the proprietor waited
+on them with great diligence. At benches like writing desks, on which
+were tools of various descriptions, were seated some half a dozen
+workmen who were busily engaged. They never looked up while we
+stood by and examined their work, which was of a high order. The
+filagree-work was beautiful and artistic. There were numerous personal
+ornaments, some of solid gold, others plaited. The bracelets which
+they were making might fittingly adorn the neck of a queen. I learned
+that these skilled men worked sixteen hours a day on moderate wages.
+Their work went into first-class Chinese bric-a-brac stores and into
+the jewelry stores of the merchants who supply the rich and cultured
+with their ornaments.
+
+But it is time that we visit the restaurant. This is located in a
+stately building and is one of the first class. It overlooks the old
+Plaza, though you enter from the street one block west of the Plaza.
+You ascend broad stairs, and then you find yourself in a wide room or
+dining hall in two sections. Here are tables round and square, and
+here you are waited on by the sons of the Fiery Flying Dragon clad in
+well-made tunics, sometimes of silk material. As your eye studies the
+figure before you, the dress and the physiognomy, you do not fail to
+notice the long pigtail, the Chinaman's glory, as a woman's delight
+is her long hair. The tea, which is fragrant, is served to you out
+of dainty cups, China cups, an evidence that the tea-drinking of
+Americans and Europeans is derived from the Celestial Empire. The
+tea-plant is said, by a pretty legend, to have been formed from the
+eyelids of Buddha Dharma, which, in his generosity, he cut off for the
+benefit of men. If you wish for sweetmeats they will be served in a
+most tempting way. You can also have chicken, rice, and vegetables,
+and fruits, after the Chinese fashion. You can eat with your fingers
+if you like, or use knives and forks, or, if you desire to play the
+Chinaman, with the chop-sticks. In Chinatown the men and the women do
+not eat together. This is also the custom of China, and hence there is
+not what we look upon as an essential element of home-life--father
+and mother and children and guests, if there be such, gathered in a
+pleasant dining-room with the flow of edifying conversation and the
+exchange of courtesies. Confucius never talked when he ate, and his
+disciples affect his taciturnity at their meals. Though in scholastic
+times, in European institutions and in religious communities, men kept
+silence at their meals, yet the hours were enlivened by one who read
+for the edification of all. The interchange of thought, however,--the
+spoken word one with another, at the family table, is the better way.
+Silence may be golden, but speech is more golden if seasoned with
+wisdom; and even the pleasant jest and the _bon mot_ have their office
+and exercise a salutary influence on character and conduct.
+
+The food of Chinamen generally is very simple. Rice is the staple
+article of consumption. They like fruits and use them moderately. They
+eat things too, which would be most repulsive to the epicurean taste
+of an Anglo-Saxon. Even lizards and rats and young dogs they will
+not refuse. But these things are prepared in a manner to tempt the
+appetite. After you have partaken of your repast in the Chinese
+Restaurant, if you request it, tobacco pipes will be brought in, and
+your waiter will fill and light them for you and your friends. You can
+even, with a certain degree of caution, indulge in the opium pipe, the
+joy of the Chinaman. As you draw on this pipe and take long draughts
+you lapse into a strange state, all your ills seem to vanish, and you
+become indifferent to the world. The beggar in imagination becomes
+a millionaire, and for the time he feels that he is in the midst
+of courtly splendours. But, ah! When one awakes from his dream the
+pleasures are turned into ashes, and the glory fades as the fires
+of the pipe die. _Sic transit gloria mundi_! On the walls of the
+restaurant were various Chinese decorations. The inevitable lantern
+was in evidence. Here also were tablets with sentences in the language
+of the Celestials. But there was one thing that struck me forcibly as
+I examined the various objects in the rooms. In the rear half of the
+restaurant, on the north side of the room, stood a Chinese safe,
+somewhat in fashion like our ordinary American safe. It was not,
+however, secured with the combination lock with which we are all
+familiar. It shut like a cupboard, and had eight locks on a chain as
+it were. Every lock represented a man whose money or whose valuables
+were in the safe. Each of the eight men had a key for his own lock,
+different from all the other seven. When the safe is to be opened all
+the eight men must be present. Is this a comment on the honesty of
+the Chinaman? Is this indicative of their lack of confidence in each
+other? And yet as a house-servant the Chinaman is trusty and faithful
+and honest. He is also silent as to what transpires in his master's
+house and at his employer's table. The writer has conversed with
+people who have had Chinamen in their service, he has also visited
+the homes of gentlemen where only Chinese servants are employed
+in domestic work, and all bear testimony to their excellence and
+faithfulness and honesty.
+
+No visit to Chinatown would be complete without an inspection of its
+theatre and a study of the audience. Here you see the Celestials _en
+masse_, you behold them in their amusements. Let us repair then to the
+Jackson Street Theatre. The building was once a hotel, now it is
+a place of pastime; and singularly under the same roof is a small
+Joss-House,--for the Chinaman couples his amusements with his
+religion. It rather reminds one of those buildings in Christian lands,
+which, while used for religious services, yet have kitchens and places
+for theatrical shows and amusements under the same roof. But the play
+has already begun. Indeed it began at six o'clock--and it is now
+nearly eleven P.M. It will, however, continue till midnight. This is
+the rule; for the Chinaman does nothing by halves, and he takes his
+amusement in a large quantity at a time. The theatre had galleries on
+three sides and these were packed with men and women as well as the
+main floor. There were altogether a thousand persons present, and it
+was indeed a strange sight to look into their faces, dressed alike as
+they were, and all seemingly looking alike. The women were seated in
+the west gallery on the right hand of the stage by themselves. This
+is an Eastern custom which Asiatic nations generally observe. Even
+in their religious assemblies the women sit apart. The custom arose
+primarily from the idea that woman is inferior to man. In the Jewish
+temple as well as in the synagogue, the sexes were separated. It is so
+to-day in most synagogues. Among the Mohammedans, too, woman is ruled
+out and is kept apart; and so strong is custom it even affected the
+Christian church in Oriental lands in the early days. You see a trace
+of it still in the East in church-arrangements.
+
+A Chinese play takes a number of weeks or even months in which to
+complete it. It may be founded on domestic life or on some historic
+scene. Sometimes the history of a province of the Chinese Empire is
+the theme. The plays are mostly comedy. There are no grand tragedies
+like those of the old Greek poets. The Chinese have had no such
+writers as Sophocles or Euripides, no such creators of plays as
+Shakespeare, and they have no such actors as a Garrick or an Irving.
+We were invited to seats on the stage--which had no curtains,
+everything being done openly. In order to reach the stage the guide
+conducted us down the passageway or aisle through the midst of the
+audience. Then we ascended a platform at the end of the stage and went
+behind it into a long room where the actors were putting on costumes
+of a fantastic shape and painting their faces with bright coloured
+pigments. Some of them also put on masks that would frighten a person
+should he meet the wearers suddenly. The majority of the masks were
+caricatures of the human face and were comical in expression. We felt
+quite at home on the stage at once; for here, seated on either side
+with the actors in the midst of the company, were many of our friends
+lay and clerical, men and women, looking on in wonder at the strange
+performance. An orchestra of six or seven members was here on the
+back part of the stage--and the music! It consisted of the beating of
+drums, the sounding of gongs and other outlandish noises. Now and then
+above the din you could catch the sound of a clarionet and the feeble
+strains of a banjo. It was indeed pandemonium! Yet above all the noise
+and confusion you could hear the high pitched voices of the actors
+as they shouted and gesticulated. The audience, I noticed, was most
+attentive and decorous. They were evidently well pleased with the
+play; and what was quite remarkable they seemed to have neither ears
+nor eyes for their visitors. Of course they must have seen us, but
+with an indifference that almost bordered on contempt they paid no
+attention to us.
+
+In the play one of the actors died on the stage, but the death had
+nothing of the tragic or heroic in it. After a brief interval he rose
+up and walked off amid the merriment of the audience.
+
+Many Chinamen come here to spend their evening. The admission is fifty
+cents, which entitles one to a seat. As the play runs through six
+hours at a time, they feel that they get the worth of their money.
+They meet their friends there also; and although they are not very
+demonstrative towards each other, like the warm blooded races of Italy
+and Greece and Northern Europe and the United States, yet they are
+very happy in the presence of men of their own race and nation. The
+theatre is about the only place where they can meet on common ground,
+at least in large bodies, and then, as we have already intimated, the
+theatre is something more than a place of amusement in their eyes.
+Their forefathers liked such plays, and they believe that the spirits
+of the dead are in a certain sense present to share in the enjoyments
+of men in the body.
+
+Only men and boys act on the Chinese stage. There are no women, though
+the female sex is personated. This has its advantages. Woman is kept
+out of harm; she is not subject to the indignities and temptations
+which beset her among other peoples who employ her services. Of course
+there are good and virtuous women on the stage--very many, I trust!
+But it will be admitted that the life of an actress is one of trial.
+She must of necessity be brought into intercourse with an element
+whose moral ideals are not the loftiest, and she must have unusual
+strength of character to preserve her integrity. She can do it! I
+believe that men and women can resist temptation in all spheres, in
+all vocations of life; I have great faith in humanity, especially when
+sustained by divine helps; but we must not subject the bow to too much
+tension lest it break. The personating of characters which have in
+them a spice of wickedness, the taking of the part in a play which
+represents the downfall of a virtuous person, the setting forth of the
+passions of love and hatred, must in time produce a powerful effect on
+the mind of a young woman, and there is danger that the neophyte on
+the stage will be contaminated with the base things of life before
+strength of character is developed. The Chinese are to be commended in
+this respect, whatever their motive in excluding their women from the
+stage. The reproduction of Greek plays, in some of our universities,
+where only men take the parts, shows what could be done among us on
+the stage, and successfully.
+
+The Chinese actors whom I saw, exhibited a great deal of human nature
+in their acting. There was the full display of the human passions; and
+they entered into their work with zest as if it were real life. Some
+of the men in the audience were smoking cigars, others cigarettes. The
+Asiatic has a fondness for cigarettes. You see the men of the East
+smoking everywhere, whether in Syria, or Egypt, or Nubia, or Arabia.
+And is it not true that men are much the same the world over, in their
+pastimes and pursuits, their loves and their pleasures?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE JOSS-HOUSE, CHINESE IMMIGRATION AND CHINESE THEOLOGY
+
+In Chinatown--Conception of God--The Joss House--Chinese Mottoes--The
+Joss a Chinaman--Greek and Egyptian Ideas of God--Different Types of
+Madonnas--Chinese Worship and Machine Prayers--The Joss-House and
+the Christian Church--Chinese Immigration--Chinamen in the United
+States--A Plague Spot--Fire Crackers and Incense Sticks--The Lion and
+the Hen--The Man with Tears of Blood--Filial Piety--The Joss--Origin
+of the World--Creation of Man--Spirits of the Dead--Ancestral
+Rites--The Chinese Emperor--What Might Have Been--The Hand of God.
+
+
+Our study of Chinatown and the civilisation of the country of the
+Yellow Dragon, as seen in the City of the Golden Gate, has thus far
+brought us in contact with the social and business life of the Chinese
+and their amusements; but we are now to visit one of their temples of
+worship, the Joss-House. And here the real man will be revealed; for
+it is in religious services and ceremonies and beliefs that we get a
+true knowledge of a race or a nation. The conception of God which you
+have is the key to your character. If your views of Deity are low and
+ignoble you will not achieve any greatness in the world; but if on the
+other hand you invest the Being Whom you worship with noble attributes
+and look upon Him as just and holy, a God of mercy and judgment, your
+breast will be animated with grand thoughts and lofty ideals will
+impel you to the performance of heroic deeds. The word Joss, which we
+use for a Chinese idol or god, seems to be derived from the Portugese,
+Dios, or rather it is the Pidgin English of Dios. A Joss-House then is
+a Chinese idol or god-house. We are now standing before such a place
+of worship. This is on the corner of Kearney and Pine Streets, and
+is built of brick, and as we look up we see that it is three stories
+high. There is a marble slab over the entrance with an inscription
+which tells us that this building is the Sze-Yap Asylum. Let us enter.
+The lower story, we find, is given up to business of one kind or
+another connected with the Sze-Yap Immigration Society. This, we note,
+is richly adorned with valuable tapestries and silken hangings, and
+the rich colours attract the eye at once. If you wish to sit down you
+can, and enjoy the novelty of the scene. For here are easy chairs
+which invite you to rest. In your inspection of the place you venture
+to peer into the room back of this, and you perceive at once that
+there is the lounging place of the establishment. You see men on
+couches perfectly at ease and undisturbed by your presence, smoking
+cigarettes or opium, the Chinaman's delight. If you desire to
+penetrate further into the building you will come to the kitchen where
+the dainty dishes of the Chinese are cooked; but you retreat and
+ascend a staircase in the southeast corner of the first room, and
+soon you are in the Joss-House proper. This second story is devoted
+exclusively to religious purposes. The room to which you are now
+introduced is about thirty feet square, and as you look around you
+perceive the hangings on the walls and the rich decorations of the
+ceiling. Here are placards on the walls, which, your guide will tell
+you, if you are not conversant with the Chinese tongue, bear on them
+sentences from the writings of Confucius, Mencius, and others, with
+exhortations to do nothing against integrity or virtue, to venerate
+ancestors and to be careful not to injure one's reputation in the eyes
+of Americans;--all of which is most excellent advice, and worthy of
+the attention of men everywhere. You then cast your eyes on the gilded
+spears, and standards and battle-axes standing in the corners of the
+Temple, and as you look up you almost covet the great Chinese lanterns
+suspended from the ceiling. Your eyes are finally directed to the
+altar, near which, and on it, are flowers artificial and natural. At
+the rear in a kind of a niche in the Joss or god. The figure of this
+deity was like a noble Chinaman, well-dressed, with a moustache, and
+having in his eyes a far-away expression. He wore a tufted crown,
+which made him look somewhat war-like. It is but natural that this
+Joss should be a blind man. The Greek gods and goddesses have Greek
+countenances. The idolatrous nations fashion their deities after their
+own likeness. And what are these but deified human beings? It is so in
+Greek and Roman mythology. The Egyptian Osiris is an Egyptian. It is
+true that some of the ancients outside of Hebrew Revelation had a
+better conception of God than others. Even in Egypt where birds and
+beasts and creeping things received divine honors there were scholars
+and poets who had an exalted idea of the Deity, as witness the Poems
+of Pentaur. This is true also of some of the Greek Poets who had a
+deep insight into divine things. It is not a little interesting to
+note also that artists of different nations paint the Madonna after
+the style of their own women. Very few of the pictures in the great
+art galleries are after the style of face which you see in the Orient.
+Hence there are Dutch Madonnas, and Italian and French and English
+types. There were no worshippers in the Joss-House at the hour when I
+visited it. Worship is not a prominent feature of Chinese religious
+life. The good Chinaman comes once a year at least, perhaps oftener,
+and burns a bit of perforated paper before his Joss, in order to show
+that he is not forgetful of his deity. This bit of paper is about
+six inches long and two inches wide. He also puts printed or written
+papers in a machine which is run like a clock. Well, this is an easy
+way to say prayers. And are there not many prayers offered, not
+merely by Chinamen, that are machine prayers, soulless, heartless,
+meaningless, and faithless, and which bring no answer? But how simple,
+how beautiful, how sublime, the golden Prayer which the Divine Master
+taught His disciples! Lord, teach us how to pray. If the noble Liturgy
+of the Church is properly rendered,--for it is the expansion of the
+Lord's Prayer,--there will be no machine-praying, and the answer to
+prayer will be rich and abundant. The contrast between the worship
+of the Joss and the worship of the true God in a Christian Church is
+striking and affords reflection. The former is of the earth earthy,
+the latter transports the devout worshipper to the throne of the Most
+High. There is no fear that the religion of the Joss-House will ever
+usurp the religion of the Christian altar. Men have expressed the fear
+that if the Chinese came in overwhelming numbers to America they would
+endanger the Christian faith by their idolatry. But would this be
+true? Has Christianity anything to dread? What impression has the
+Joss-House made all these years on the life of San Francisco outside
+of Chinatown? None whatever, except to make the reflecting man value
+the Christian faith with its elevating influences and its blessed
+hopes all the more. It is a mistake then to exclude Chinamen from our
+shores on the ground that they will do harm to Christianity. On the
+contrary the Church will do them good. The Gospel is the leaven which
+will be the salvation of heathen men. Did it not go forth into the
+Gentile world on its glorious mission, and did it not convert many
+nations in the first ages? Has it lost its potency to-day? No! It is
+as powerful as ever to win men from their idols and their evil lives.
+The question of Chinese immigration is a large one. It has its social
+and its political aspects. It is found all along the Pacific coast
+that Chinamen make good and faithful servants. The outcry against them
+as competing with white laborers and artisans is more the result of
+political agitation for political purposes than good judgment. Where
+they have been displaced on farms, in mills, in warehouses, in
+domestic life, white men and women have not been found to take their
+places and do the work which they can do so well. Under the Geary Act
+immigration has been restricted and the numbers of the Chinese in the
+United States have been gradually decreasing. In the year 1854 there
+were only 3,000 Chinese in the City of San Francisco; but even then
+there was agitation against them. It was Governor Bigler who called
+them "coolies," and this term they repudiated with the same abhorrence
+which the negro or black man has for the term "nigger." They kept on
+increasing, however, until in 1875 there were in the whole State of
+California 130,000. Of this number 30,000 were in San Francisco.
+To-day there are only about 46,000 in California and there are not
+more than thirty thousand of these in the City of San Francisco. There
+are only 110,000 Chinese altogether in the United States proper. Even
+the most ardent exclusionist can see from this that there is nothing
+to dread as to an overwhelming influx that will threaten the integrity
+and existence of our civilisation. The labour-question and the
+race-question and the international question, aroused by the presence
+of the Chinese within our borders, will from time to time cause
+agitation and provoke discussion and heated debate and evoke oratory
+of one kind or another; but the question which should be uppermost in
+the minds of wise statesmen is how shall they be assimilated to our
+life? How shall we make them Christians? The answer will be the
+best solution of the whole matter, if it has in mind the spiritual
+interests of the Chinaman and of all other heathen on our shores.
+There is indeed a plague spot in Chinatown, the social fester,
+which can and ought to be removed. But this is true of American San
+Francisco as well as of Chinatown. What, we may ask, are the men and
+women of as beautiful a city as ever sat on Bay or Lake or Sea-Shore
+or River, doing for its purgation, for its release from moral
+defilement and "garments spotted with the flesh?" This indeed is one
+of the searching questions to be asked of any other City, such as New
+York, Chicago, St. Louis, London, Paris, Cairo, Constantinople, as
+well as San Francisco. Among the other noticeable things in the
+Joss-House were two immense lanterns, as much for ornament as for
+utility. Then I saw a big drum and a bell, used in some of the
+processions of the Temple; for the Chinese take special delight in
+noises, indeed the more noise the better satisfied they are. During
+my visit some of the Joss-House attendants were shooting off fire
+crackers; and I was told that this was an acceptable offering to the
+Chinese god. One who was selling small, slender incense sticks, said
+that you could burn them to drive away the devil, an excellent purpose
+certainly. He also said they were good to keep moths away. Doubtless
+in the Chinese mind there is a connection between moths and evil
+spirits; but you smile at all such puerilities. They belong to the
+childhood of the world and not to the beginning of the twentieth
+century. Among other creatures which they venerate are chickens and
+lions. They invest the lion with divine attributes on account of his
+majesty and power. But the chicken? Well, it is a gentle creature. It
+is the embodiment of motherhood and it speaks of care, not only to
+the Chinaman's understanding, but to ours also. The Divine Teacher,
+greater than Confucius, said: "How often would I have gathered thy
+children together as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings!"
+Will China, now waking out of the sleep of centuries, allow Him to
+gather her children together under the wings of His Cross? "And ye
+would not." Oh, what pathos in these few words! But doubtless they
+will. Many during the war of the Boxers were "gathered" unto Him,
+emulating the zeal and courage and faith of the martyrs of the early
+days of the Church. As the hen is sacred in the eyes of the Chinaman,
+sacred as the peacock to Juno or the ibis to the Egyptians, they swear
+by her head, and an oath thus taken may not be broken.
+
+One of the images which I saw in the Joss-House was pointed out as
+the God of the Door; and how suggestive this title and this office!
+Another figure, on the right side of the altar, which attracted my
+attention particularly was that of Toi Sin. He was dressed somewhat
+like a mandarin, and his head was bared, while tears as of blood were
+on his cheeks. He lived some three hundred years after the Advent of
+Christ; and owing to his disobedience to his parents, for which he was
+punished in his conscience, and otherwise, he grieved himself to death
+and wept tears of blood. His image, I was told, is placed in all
+Temples as a warning to children. It is a forceful lesson, and it is a
+timely warning. The one thing that is characteristic of a Chinaman is
+his filial piety. This filial piety was admired in all ages. It
+was inculcated in the old Hebrew Law and enforced with weighty
+considerations. It was a virtue among the Greeks as well as other
+peoples of the Gentile world; and I wonder not that when the heroes
+who captured Troy saw Aeneas carrying his aged father Anchises on his
+shoulders and leading his son, the puer Ascanius, by the hand, out of
+the burning city, they cheered him and allowed him to escape with
+his precious burden. A Chinaman is taught by precept and example to
+venerate his parents and to give them divine honors after death.
+Should a Chinese child be disobedient he would be punished severely
+by the bamboo or other instrument, and he would bring on himself the
+wrath of all his family. This strong sense of filial piety has done
+more for the stability and perpetuity of the Chinese Empire than ought
+else. It is a great element of strength and it leads to respect for
+customs and to the observance of maxims. Especially are burial places
+held in sacred esteem, and as they contain the ashes of the fathers
+they must not be disturbed or desecrated. In this respect we might
+emulate the Chinese, for they are a perfect illustration of the
+old precept, "Honour thy father and thy mother," which, in a busy,
+independent age, there is danger of forgetting. But we look with no
+little interest on the Joss above the altar, the Chinese god. His name
+is Kwan Rung, and I am informed that he was born about two hundred
+years after the beginning of the Christian era. Such is the person who
+is worshipped here. That he may not be hungry food is placed before
+him at times, and also water to drink. It is a poor, weak human god
+after all, a dying, dead man. How different the Creator of the ends
+of the earth, Who fainteth not neither is weary! The Chinese have no
+conception of the true God. They cannot conceive of the beauty and
+power and compassion of Jesus Christ until they are brought into the
+light of the Gospel. But what is Chinese theology? What do they teach
+about the origin of the world and man and his destiny. The scholars
+tell us that the world was formed by the duel powers Yang and Yin, who
+were in turn influenced by their own creations. First the heavens were
+brought into being, then the earth. From the co-operation of Yang and
+Yin the four seasons were produced, and the seasons gave birth to the
+fruits and flowers of the earth. The dual principles also brought
+forth fire and water, and the sun and moon and stars were originated.
+The idea of a Creator in the Biblical sense is far removed from the
+Chinese mind. Their first man, named Pwanku, after his appearance, was
+set to work to mould the Chaos out of which he was born. He had also
+to chisel out the earth which was to be his abode. Behind him through
+the clefts made by his chisel and mallet are sun and moon and stars,
+and at his right hand, as companions, may be seen the Dragon, the
+Tortoise and the Phoenix as well as the Unicorn. His labours extend
+over a period of eighteen thousand years. He grew in stature at the
+rate of six feet every day, and when his work was finished he died.
+The mountains were formed from his head, his breath produced the wind,
+and the moisture of his lips the clouds. His voice is the thunder,
+his limbs are the four poles, his veins the rivers, his sinews the
+wave-like motions of the earth, his flesh the fields, his beard the
+stars, his skin and hair herbs and trees, his teeth bones, his marrow
+metals, rocks and precious stones, his sweat rain, and the insects
+clinging to his body become men and women. Ah, how applicable the
+memorable line of Horace!
+
+  Parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus.
+
+In regard to the spirits of the dead the Chinese believe that they
+linger still in the places which were their homes while alive on
+earth, and that they can be moved to pleasure or pain by what they see
+or hear. These spirits of the departed are delighted with offerings
+rendered to them and take umbrage at neglect. Believing also that the
+spirits can help or injure men they pray to them and make offerings to
+them. From this we can understand the meaning and object of ancestral
+rites. In these rites they honour and assist the dead as if they were
+alive still. Food, clothing and money are offered, as they believe
+they eat and drink and have need of the things of this life. Even
+theatrical exhibitions and musical entertainments are provided on the
+presumption that they are gratified with what pleased them while in
+the body. Now as all past generations are to be provided for, the
+Chinese Pantheon contains myriads of beings to be worshipped.
+But think, what a burden it becomes to the poor man who tries
+conscientiously to do his duty to the departed!
+
+Now this ancestral worship leads to the deduction that it is an
+unfilial thing not to marry and beget sons by whom the line of
+descendants may be continued. Otherwise the line would cease, and the
+spirits would have none to care for them or worship them.
+
+The Chinese view of rulers or Kings is also striking. According to the
+belief prevalent regarding government, Heaven and Earth were without
+speech. These created man who should represent them. This man is none
+other than the Emperor their vicegerent. He is constituted ruler over
+all people. This accounts for three things; first, the superiority
+which the Chinese emperors assume over the kings and rulers of other
+countries; secondly, for the long-lived empire of China, it being
+rebellion against Heaven to lift up one's self against the Emperor;
+and in the third place it explains to us why divine honours are paid
+to him. He is a sacred person. He is in a certain sense a god. The
+view is similar to that entertained by the Roman Emperors, who, in
+inscriptions and on coins employed the term Deus, and at times exacted
+divine honours. As we turn from the Joss-House and walk away from this
+bit of heathendom in the heart of an active, stirring, prosperous,
+great American city with its Christian civilisation and its Christian
+Churches and its Christian homes, we cannot but ask ourselves what
+would have been the history of the Pacific States, of California with
+its nearly eight hundred miles of coast, if the Chinese had settled
+here centuries ago? If they had been navigators and colonizers like
+the Phoenicians of old, like the Greeks and Romans, if they had had
+a Columbus, a Balboa, a Cabrillo, a Drake, the whole history of the
+country west of the Rocky Mountains might have been totally different.
+Millions of Chinamen instead of thousands might now be in possession
+of that great region of our land, and great cities like Canton and
+Fuchau, Pekin and Tientsin, might rise up on the view instead of
+San Diego and Los Angeles, Sacramento and San Francisco, with their
+idolatry and peculiar life and customs. Another question may be asked
+here by way of speculation. What would have been the effect of Chinese
+occupation of the Pacific coast on the Indians of all the region
+west of the Rocky Mountains? Would the followers of Confucius have
+incorporated them into their nationality, supplanted them, or caused
+them to vanish out of sight? What problems these for the ethnologist!
+Doubtless there would have been intermarriages of the races with new
+generations of commingled blood. And what would have been the result
+of this? There is a story which I have read somewhere, that long
+years ago a Chinese junk was driven by the winds to the shores of
+California, and that a Chinese merchant on board took an Indian maiden
+to wife and bore her home to the Flowery Kingdom, and that from
+this marriage was descended the famous statesman Li Hung Chang.
+But whatever the fortunes of the Indians, or the Chinese in their
+appropriation of the Pacific coast, it would not have been so
+advantageous to civilisation, to the progress of humanity. It would
+have been loss, and a hindrance to the Anglo-Saxon race destined now
+to rule the world and to break down every barrier and to set up the
+standard of the Cross everywhere for the glory of the true God. His
+hand is apparent in it all. He directs the great movements of history
+for the welfare of mankind, and He controls the destinies of nations
+for the advancement of His Kingdom!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE GENERAL CONVENTION OF 1901
+
+First Services--Drake's Chaplain--Flavel Scott Mines--Bishop Kip--Growth
+of the Church in California--The General Convention in San Francisco--A
+Western Sermon--Personnel of the Convention--Distinguished
+Names--Subjects Debated--Missions of the Church--Apportionment Plan--The
+Woman's Auxiliary--The United Offering--Missionary Meeting in Mechanics'
+Pavilion--College Reunions--Zealous Men--A Dramatic Scene--Closing
+Service--Object Lesson--A Revelation to California--Examples of the
+Church's Training--Mrs. Twing--John I. Thompson--Golden Gate of
+Paradise.
+
+
+As we turn away from Chinatown, with its Oriental customs and its
+peculiar life and its religion, we naturally give ourselves up to
+reflection on the mission and character of the Christian Church.
+While we recognise the good that is done by "all who profess and call
+themselves Christians," and thank God for every good work done in the
+name and for the sake of Jesus Christ, we may more especially consider
+the development of the Episcopal Church, pure and Apostolic in its
+origin, on the Pacific coast. We must ever keep in mind the services
+held in this region as far back as the year 1579, by Chaplain Francis
+Fletcher, under Admiral Drake, when the old Prayer Book of the
+Church of England was used on the shores of the Golden Gate, a fact
+commemorated, as we have already noted in a previous chapter, by
+the Prayer Book Cross erected by the late George W. Childs, of
+Philadelphia, in Golden Gate Park. This was prophetic of bright days
+to come. Time would roll on and bring its marvellous changes, but
+the truth of God would remain the same, and the Church would still
+flourish and the liturgy of our forefathers would hold its place in
+the affections of the people of all ranks, as at this day. Drake and
+Fletcher could hardly have realised, however, that the good seed which
+they then sowed, though it might remain hidden from view for many
+generations, would in time spring-up and yield a glorious harvest.
+We are not unmindful, of course, of the labours and teachings of the
+Franciscans among the California Indians; but when this order of
+things passed away and the Anglo-Saxon succeeded the Spaniard and the
+Mexican, it was but natural that the old Church which had made Great
+Britain what it was and is, aye, and moulded our civilisation on
+this continent, should seek a foothold in the beautiful lands by the
+Pacific and on the slopes of the Sierras. Many of the Church's sons
+were among the thousands who sought California in quest of gold, and
+these Argonauts she would follow whithersoever they went. They must
+not be left alone to wrestle with the temptations which would beset
+them far away from home and the hallowing influences of sacred
+institutions and religious services. Hence it is that we behold that
+zealous missionary of the Church, the Rev. Flavel Scott Mines, going
+forth to seek out Christ's sheep in San Francisco and elsewhere, and
+to gather them into the fold of the Good Shepherd. His history is most
+interesting and instructive. He was the son of Rev. John Mines, D.D.,
+a Presbyterian clergyman of Virginia, and was born in Leesburg, Va.,
+on the 31st of December, 1811. In 1830 he was graduated from Princeton
+Theological Seminary, and soon after he became pastor of the Laight
+Street Presbyterian Church, New York city, where he served with
+distinction until he resigned his charge in 1841. In 1842 he took
+orders in the Church, of which to the day of his death he was a loyal
+son. Reasons for becoming a churchman and the motives which impelled
+him are set forth in a striking and graphic manner in his monumental
+book, "A Presbyterian Clergyman Looking For the Church," a work of
+marked ability and of great utility. It had a large sale in his day,
+and it is still sought after as a book of permanent value. It is a
+strong plea for Apostolic Order and Liturgical Worship, and it is safe
+to say that it has been instrumental in leading many an inquirer into
+the "old paths" and the Faith as "once delivered to the Saints." The
+Rev. Mr. Mines, after his ordination, became assistant minister in St.
+George's Church, New York city, under Rev. Dr. James Milnor. From here
+he went to the Danish West Indies and became Rector of St. Paul's
+Parish, Fredericksted, St. Croix, about forty miles square and
+embracing almost half of the island. Owing to failing health he
+returned, after many arduous labours, to the United States, and became
+Rector of St. Luke's Church, Rossville, Staten Island. He went finally
+to San Francisco, where he preached for the first time on July 8th,
+1849, in the midst of the gold excitement, and on July 22nd of this
+same year, became the founder of Trinity Parish, where his honoured
+name is still held in grateful remembrance, not merely by some of the
+twenty-two original members, who still live, but by their children and
+grandchildren. The first Trinity Church was located on the northeast
+corner of Post and Powell Streets. It was a modest building, which, in
+1867, gave place to an edifice, Gothic in design, costing $85,000. A
+few years ago the present Trinity Church was erected on the northeast
+corner of Bush and Gough Streets, with ample grounds for parish
+buildings. This sacred edifice is one of the finest and largest
+churches on the Pacific coast, and is a combination of Spanish and
+Byzantine styles of architecture. It was designed by A. Paige Brown,
+who was the architect of the California building at the Columbian
+Exposition, in Chicago, and also of the new Bethesda Church, Saratoga
+Springs, N.Y. I have thus dwelt with particularity on the Rev. Flavel
+Scott Mines's life and work, because Trinity Parish is the mother of
+all the other Parishes in California, and because here in this new
+edifice, where there is a tablet to his memory, and where he is
+buried, the General Convention was held in 1901, a council of the
+Church which will ever be memorable. It is well also to rescue from
+oblivion the memory of a man who laid the foundations of the Church in
+California on the enduring principles of the ancient creeds. May we
+not learn also from the facts of his life, which show how faithful and
+accomplished he was, that the men who are to be heralds of the Cross
+in new fields are to be the ablest and the best equipped that the
+Church can furnish? Other early missionaries of the Church who may be
+named here are the Rev. Dr. Ver Mehr, who arrived in San Francisco
+in September, 1849, and in 1850 founded Grace Parish; and Rev. John
+Morgan, who organised Christ Church Parish in 1853; and Rev. Dr.
+Christopher B. Wyatt, who succeeded Mines in Trinity Church. There is
+another also whose name is interwoven in the history of the Church's
+mission in California. It is that of Right Rev. William Ingraham Kip,
+D.D., LL.D., who was consecrated first Bishop of California, October
+28, 1853. Few, if any, of his day, were better fitted in scholarship,
+zeal, and other gifts and qualifications for his work than he, who is
+the famous author of "The Double Witness of the Church," a book which
+has largely moulded the faith and practice of the churchmen of this
+generation. Bishop Kip's immortal work and Mines's incomparable volume
+deserve to be ranked together, and though they differ widely in their
+manner of presenting the Old Faith, yet are they one in purpose. Is it
+not a little singular, or is it not rather a happy coincidence, that
+the two foremost pioneers of the Church's work in California should
+thus be the authors of works which are fit to take rank with the
+Apologiai of the early Christian writers or the "Apologia pro Ecclesia
+Anglicana" of Bishop Jewell?
+
+Mines went to his rest in 1852, just in the prime of life, while Kip
+was spared to the Church until 1893, witnessing its great increase and
+reaping the abundant harvest from that early sowing. The growth is
+seen to-day in the three dioceses in the State. California, the parent
+diocese, with San Francisco as its chief city, Right Rev. William
+Ford Nichols, D.D., Bishop, has its eighty-one clergymen, with its
+eighty-six parishes and missions, and 8,585 communicants. Los Angeles,
+Right Rev. Joseph Horsfall Johnson, D.D., Bishop, has its forty-nine
+clergy, with its fifty-six parishes and missions, and 4,577
+communicants; while Sacramento, Right Rev. William Hall Moreland,
+D.D., Bishop, has thirty-four clergymen with seventy parishes and
+missions, and a list of 2,556 communicants. All this, however, is not
+the full evidence of the strength of the Church on the Pacific coast.
+There are the church schools and hospitals and other agencies for
+good, and there are the blessed influences which the Church, with
+her stability and order and work, is exerting among the people. The
+results arising from the presence of the members of the General
+Convention will be gratifying. Everywhere throughout the State of
+California this august body was hailed with a glad welcome, and San
+Francisco and her suburban towns did everything possible to make
+churchmen feel at home. The attendance at services was large, and a
+deep and an abiding interest was enkindled. It was said by the press
+and by leading citizens, that while many bodies had met in San
+Francisco from all parts of the land, none had ever surpassed in
+standard that of the Convention or even equalled it in dignity,
+scholarship, eloquence and other noted characteristics. The newspapers
+of the city, such as the _Daily Call_ and the _Chronicle_, gave
+up large space to the services, debates and other features of the
+Convention, and they were always complimentary in their comments on
+individuals as well as on receptions and sermons and addresses. The
+keynote of the Convention was struck by the Right Rev. Benjamin Wistar
+Morris, D.D., Bishop of Oregon, in his sermon based on St. Luke,
+chapter v, verse 4:--"Now when He had left speaking, He said unto
+Simon, Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a
+draught." The discourse was in every sense what the venerable prelate
+had said it would be, a "Western" one, and it was a powerful plea
+setting forth the urgent necessity of extending and supporting the
+Church in her missionary efforts in the Pacific coast States.
+
+The attendance of members in the House of Deputies was unusually
+large, and while some familiar faces were missed, like Dean Hoffman,
+of the General Theological Seminary; Rev. Dr. Morgan Dix, of Trinity
+Parish, New York; Rev. Dr. Edward A. Renouf, of Keene, N.H.; Rev.
+Dr. W.W. Battershall, of Albany, N.Y.; Mr. Spencer Trask, of Yaddo,
+Saratoga Springs, N.Y.; Mr. Louis Hasbrouck, of Ogdensburgh, N.Y.; Mr.
+G.P. Keese, of Cooperstown, N.Y.; and Judge Robert Earl, of Herkimer,
+N.Y., yet the personnel of the Convention was up to the usual
+standard. The new deputies, clerical and lay, felt at home at once,
+and some of them made good reputations for themselves in debate and in
+committee-work. It would seem invidious, perhaps, to single out any
+one deputy more than another, when all excelled, yet the names of some
+of the representative clergymen and laymen of the Church may justly be
+mentioned, as for example, Rev. Dr. John S. Lindsay, of Boston, Mass.,
+the distinguished and well-balanced President of the House; Rev. Dr.
+Arthur Lawrence, of Stockbridge, Mass.; Rev. Dr. Reese F. Alsop, of
+Brooklyn, N.Y.; Rev. Dr. J. Houston Eccleston, of Baltimore, Md.; Rev.
+Dr. Samuel D. McConnell, of Brooklyn, N.Y.; Rev. Dr. J.S. Hodges, of
+Baltimore, Md.; Rev. Dr. George Hodges, of Cambridge, Mass.; Rev. Dr.
+Cameron Mann, of Kansas City, Mo.; Rev. Dr. James W. Ashton, of Olean,
+N.Y.; Rev. Dr. Robert J. Nevin, of Rome, Italy; Rev. Dr. John Fulton,
+of _The Church Standard_, Philadelphia, Pa.; Rev. Dr. William B,
+Bodine, of Philadelphia, Pa.; Rev. Dr. Charles S. Olmstead, of Bala,
+Pa.; Rev. Dr. George McClellan Fiske, of Providence, R.I.; Rev. Dr.
+Edgar A. Enos, of Troy, N.Y.; Rev. Dr. J. Lewis Parks and Rev. Dr.
+William M. Grosvenor of New York; Rev. Dr. R.M. Kirby, of Potsdam,
+N.Y.; Rev. Dr. John H. Egar, of Rome, N.Y.; Rev. Dr. George D.
+Silliman, of Stockport, N.Y.; Rev. Dr. John Brainard, of Auburn, N.Y.;
+Rev. Dr. H. Martyn Hart, of Denver, Col.; Rev. Dr. Edwin S. Lines, of
+New Haven, Conn; Rev. Dr. Daniel C. Roberts, of Concord, N.H.; Rev.
+Dr. Alfred B. Baker, of Princeton, N.J.; Rev. George S. Bennitt, of
+Jersey City, N.J.; Rev. Dr. J. Isham Bliss, of Burlington, Vt.; Rev.
+John Henry Hopkins, of Chicago, Ill.; Rev. Dr. Campbell Fair, of
+Omaha, Neb.; Rev. John Williams, of Omaha, Neb.; Rev. Dr. Frederick W.
+Clampett, of San Francisco, Cal; Rev. R.G. Foute, of San Francisco,
+Cal.; Rev. Dr. Angus Crawford, of Alexandria Seminary, Va.; Rev.
+Dr. Randolph H. McKim, of Washington, D.C.; Rev. Dr. Frederick
+P. Davenport, of Memphis, Tenn.; Rev. Dr. Alex. Mackay-Smith, of
+Washington, D.C.; Rev. Henry B. Restarick, of San Diego, Cal.; Rev.
+B.W.R. Tayler, of Los Angeles, Cal.; Rev. Dr. David H. Greer, of New
+York; Rev. Dr. William R. Huntington, of New York; Rev. Dr. Beverly D.
+Tucker, of Norfolk, Va.; Rev. Dr. Carl E. Grammer, of Norfolk, Va.;
+Rev. Dr. William T. Manning, of Nashville, Tenn.; Rev. Frederick A. De
+Rosset, of Cairo, Ill.; Rev. Richard P. Williams, of Washington, D.C.;
+Rev. Dr. Henry W. Nelson, of Geneva, N.Y.; Rev. Dr. John Kershaw, of
+Charleston, S.C.; Rev. Dr. Herman C. Duncan, of Alexandria, La.; Rev.
+Dr. John K. Mason, of Louisville, Ky.; Rev. Dr. Walter R. Gardner, of
+Algoma, Wis.; Rev. Dr. George C. Hall, of Wilmington, Del; Rev. J.L.
+McKim, of Milford, Del.; Rev. Dr. Henry L. Jones, of Wilkesbarre, Pa.;
+Rev. Dr. George C. Foley, of Williamsport, Pa.; Rev. Dr. Storrs
+O. Seymour, of Litchfield, Conn.; Rev. Dr. Charles E. Craik, of
+Louisville, Ky.; Rev. C.S. Leffingwell, of Bar Harbour, Me.; Rev.
+Dr. Rufus W. Clark, of Detroit, Mich.; Rev. Dr. Lucius Waterman, of
+Claremont, N.H.; Rev. Dr. Henry H. Oberly, of Elizabeth, N.J.; Rev.
+Julian E. Ingle, of Henderson, N.C.; Rev. Dr. Charles L. Hutchins, of
+Concord, Mass., the efficient Secretary, always patient and courteous;
+Rev. Dr. Henry Anstice, of Philadelphia, Pa.; Rev. Edward W.
+Worthington, of Cleveland, Ohio, and Rev. William C. Prout, of
+Herkimer, N.Y., Assistant Secretaries; Mr. George M. Darrow, of
+Murfreesboro, Tenn.; Dr. William Seward Webb, of Shelburne, Vt.; Mr.
+Henry E. Pellew, of Washington, D.C.; Mr. Linden H. Morehouse,
+of Milwaukee, Wis., of _The Young Churchman_ Co.; Judge James M.
+Woolworth, of Omaha, Neb.; Mr. Burton Mansfield, of New Haven, Conn.;
+Hon. Cortlandt Parker, of Newark, N.J.; Judge Charles Andrews, of
+Syracuse, N.Y.; Mr. John I. Thompson, of Troy, N.Y.; Mr. Leslie
+Pell-Clarke, of Springfield Centre, N.Y.; Hon. George R. Fairbanks, of
+Fernandina, Fla.; Judge L. Bradford Prince, of Santa Fé, N.M.; Hon.
+Francis A. Lewis, of Philadelphia, Pa.; Hon. Francis L. Stetson, of
+New York; Mr. George C. Thomas, of Philadelphia, Pa., Treasurer of the
+Board of Missions; Hon. W. Bayard Cutting, of New York; Judge John H.
+Stiness, of Providence, R.I.; Hon. Joseph Packard, of Baltimore, Md.;
+Hon. Charles G. Saunders, of Lawrence, Mass.; Hon. Arthur J.C. Sowdon,
+and Hon. Robert Treat Paine, of Boston, Mass; Mr. William B. Hooper,
+of San Francisco; Mr. Henry P. Baldwin, of Detroit, Mich.; Mr. Francis
+J. McMaster, of St. Louis, Mo.; Mr. William H. Lightner, of St. Paul,
+Minn.; Mr. Richard H. Battle, of Raleigh, N.C.; Hon. G.S. Gadsden,
+of Charleston, S.C.; Mr. George Truesdell, of Washington, D.C.; Mr.
+George M. Marshall, of Salt Lake City, Utah; and Mr. Joseph Wilmer,
+of Alexandria Seminary, Va. There is one other name which must not
+be omitted, that of Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, of New York city, who,
+notwithstanding his vast business interests, was in his seat from the
+opening of the Convention until the closing session, watching all the
+debates and deliberations with the deepest interest, and serving on
+various important committees. Many of the members of the Convention,
+too, were deeply indebted to him for a gracious hospitality dispensed
+by him in his magnificent temporary home on California Avenue.
+
+To name the Bishops who in one way and another made their presence
+felt in their own House, in the Board of Missions and elsewhere, at
+meetings and in services, it would be necessary to speak of all who
+were in attendance on the Convention. Those who were specially active,
+however, were Bishop William Croswell Doane, of Albany; Bishop Henry
+Codman Potter, of New York; Bishop Daniel Sylvester Tuttle, of
+Missouri; Bishop Benjamin Wistar Morris, of Oregon; Bishop Thomas
+Underwood Dudley, of Kentucky; Bishop Ozi William Whitaker, of
+Pennsylvania; Bishop Cortlandt Whitehead, of Pittsburg; Bishop John
+Scarborough, of New Jersey; Bishop George Franklin Seymour, of
+Springfield; Bishop William David Walker, of Western New York; Bishop
+Leighton Coleman, of Delaware; Bishop Samuel David Ferguson, of Cape
+Palmas; Bishop Ellison Capers, of South Carolina; Bishop Theodore
+Nevin Morrison, of Iowa; Bishop Lewis William Burton, of Lexington;
+Bishop Sidney Catlin Partridge, of Kyoto; Bishop Peter Trimble Rowe,
+of Alaska; Bishop William Frederick Taylor, of Quincy; Bishop William
+Crane Gray, of Southern Florida; Bishop Ethelbert Talbot, of Central
+Pennsylvania; Bishop James Steptoe Johnston, of Western Texas; Bishop
+Anson Rogers Graves, of Laramie; Bishop Edward Robert Atwill, of West
+Missouri; Bishop William N. McVickar, of Rhode Island; Bishop William
+Lawrence, of Massachusetts; Bishop Arthur C.A. Hall, of Vermont;
+Bishop William Andrew Leonard, of Ohio; Bishop James Dow Morrison, of
+Duluth; Bishop Henry Yates Satterlee, of Washington; Bishop Charles C.
+Grafton, of Fond du Lac; Bishop Abiel Leonard, of Salt Lake; Bishop
+Isaac Lea Nicholson, of Milwaukee; Bishop Cleland Kinlock Nelson, of
+Georgia, and Bishop Thomas F. Gailor, of Tennessee. It is needless to
+say that Right Rev. Dr. William Ford Nichols, of California, who was
+the host of the Convention, was prominent in all gatherings, and that
+his guiding hand was seen in all the admirable arrangements made for
+meetings and services. He was ably seconded by Bishop Johnson, of Los
+Angeles, and Bishop Moreland, of Sacramento. Some faces were sadly
+missed, as for example, Bishop Niles, of New Hampshire; Bishop
+Huntington, of Central New York; Bishop Worthington, of Nebraska;
+Bishop Spaulding, of Colorado; and the Presiding Bishop, Right Rev.
+Thomas March Clark, of Rhode Island. The Secretary of the House of
+Bishops, Rev. Dr. Samuel Hart, of Middletown, Conn., was a conspicuous
+figure in the Convention, and he and his assistants, Rev. Dr. George
+F. Nelson, of New York, and Rev. Thomas J. Packard, of Washington,
+were often seen in the House of Deputies, bearing official messages.
+
+In addition to the regular business of the Convention, there were
+discussions of a high order on such matters as Amendments to the
+Constitution, the enactment of New Canons, Admission of New Dioceses,
+Marriage and Divorce, and Marginal Readings in the Bible. The Report
+of the Commission on Marginal Readings was finally adopted, with some
+modifications, after an animated debate, to the great satisfaction of
+many who felt the need of such a help in reading the Holy Scriptures.
+At times the speakers, both lay and clerical, rose to heights of
+fervid oratory, and it was an education to listen to men who were
+thoroughly versed in the themes which they handled. The Missions of
+the Church were not neglected in the midst of the exciting debates
+of the Convention, and an important step was taken when the Board
+resolved to adopt the Apportionment Plan, by which each diocese and
+missionary jurisdiction would be called on to raise a definite sum of
+money. This, it was felt, would relieve the Board from the burden of
+indebtedness, and would enable the Church to originate new work. No
+more earnest advocates of this plan could be found in the meetings of
+the two Houses of Convention as the Board of Missions, than in Bishop
+Brewer of Montana and Mr. George C. Thomas, the Treasurer. Their words
+were forcible and their manner magnetic. Bishop Doane's eloquent
+advocacy of the measure also led to happy results.
+
+In this chapter on the Triennial Council of the Church held in San
+Francisco, we must not omit to make mention of the United Offering
+of the Woman's Auxiliary to the Board of Missions. The women of the
+Church specially devoted to its missionary work had been gradually
+increasing their forces and activities and offerings. When they
+last met, in the city of Washington, D.C., three years before, they
+presented the goodly sum of $83,000; but now in San Francisco they
+were to surpass their previous efforts. They were to show forth the
+fruits of more earnest labours and richer giving. They established
+their headquarters at 1609 Sutter street, in a commodious dwelling
+house, not far from Trinity Church, where the Convention was in
+session. Here various rooms were fitted up with handiwork and other
+products of missionary labour from the numerous fields where the
+Church, in obedience to her Lord's command, is engaged in sowing
+beside all waters; and no one could walk through these artistic
+chambers adorned with the work of the Indians of Alaska and the
+dwellers of the South Seas, the converts of India, of China and
+Japan, as well as Mexico and other regions, without being filled with
+admiration. Various dioceses also of the Church exhibited pictures of
+sacred edifices showing different styles of architecture. There were
+also photographs of noted missionaries, pioneer bishops and other
+clergy in the collection. Here indeed was an object lesson, and in all
+these works was manifested a spirit of enterprise most commendable.
+Different countries were thus brought together in such a way as to
+make the student of Missions realise the fact that the Church had
+indeed gone into all lands and that the Gentiles were walking in
+the light of Him Who is the life of men. While there were important
+meetings held by the Auxiliary, and special services were arranged for
+its members, the greatest interest naturally centered in the service
+held in Grace Church on Thursday, October 3rd, when the United
+Offering for the three years ended, was laid on the Altar of God. Six
+clergymen gathered the alms, and bearing them to the chancel, they
+were received in the large gold Basin which some years ago was
+presented to the American Church by the Church of England. This Alms
+Basin is three feet in diameter, and is an object of great interest
+as well as value. It is used only at grand functions, such as the
+meetings of the General Convention. It was an occasion of great
+rejoicing as well as a cause for devout gratitude when the magnificent
+sum of one hundred and four thousand dollars was reverently placed on
+the Altar. Behind all this was the love which made the large offering
+possible, behind it too the devotion which at this most significant
+and inspiring service, led fully a thousand faithful women to draw
+nigh to their divine Lord in that blessed Eucharist which quickens the
+soul into newness of life. The sermon at the service of the United
+Offering was preached by Right Rev. Dr. Nichols, Bishop of California,
+from St. Luke, chapter ii, verses 22-24, and was one of remarkable
+power, rehearsing the righteous acts and noble deeds wrought by women
+in all ages.
+
+One of the most noted meetings during the sessions of the Convention
+was held in Mechanics' Pavilion, on the evening of Tuesday, October
+8th. It was probably the greatest gathering ever brought together on
+the Pacific coast in the interest of Missions or of Religion. There
+were not less than seven thousand persons present during the evening
+in the great hall, whose arches rang from time to time with applause
+at the sentiments of the speakers, and echoed and re-echoed the
+stirring missionary hymns sung by the vast multitude as led by the
+vested choirs of the various parishes in San Francisco. It is said
+that this enthusiastic gathering of all ranks was equalled only by
+the thousands who had assembled here only a short time before to pay
+honours to the memory of President McKinley, whom the people loved.
+Bishop Doane of Albany presided with his accustomed tact and force,
+and, after suitable devotions, introduced the four speakers. The first
+of those who addressed the assemblage was the Right Rev. Edgar Jacob,
+D.D., the Lord Bishop of Newcastle, who represented the Archbishop
+of Canterbury. He said that there were four methods of spreading the
+Gospel in obedience to the command of the Master, "Go, make disciples
+of all people of the earth." These are the evangelistic, the
+educational, the medical, and the magnetic. Of this last he said, "It
+is that the society should attract the individual. The influence of
+the individual must be followed by the influence of the society."
+Bishop Potter of New York followed in his usual happy vein. Then came
+the eloquent Bishop of Kyoto, Right Rev. Dr. Sidney C. Partridge, and
+after him Burton Mansfield, representing the laity, who spoke about
+"Re-quickened Faith as necessary to all."
+
+During the last week of the Convention there were some special
+reunions of colleges and theological seminaries. Among the most
+interesting of these, that of the Philadelphia Divinity School, with
+Bishop Whitaker presiding, may be mentioned, and also that of St.
+Stephen's College, Annandale, with its first Warden, Bishop Seymour,
+at the head of the table. Bishop Dudley honoured the gathering of
+alumni at this banquet, in the Occidental Hotel, with his presence,
+and Warden Lawrence T. Cole was a prominent figure.
+
+The Convention attracted to San Francisco several well-known clergymen
+who, although not deputies, were nevertheless deeply interested
+listeners, in the galleries and on the floor of the House, during
+the sessions, and were also participants in services and missionary
+gatherings. Among these was the Rev. Dr. Lawrence T. Cole, the
+energetic Warden of St. Stephen's College, Annandale, N.Y., of whom we
+have already spoken. There was also in attendance the Rev. A. Burtis
+Hunter, Principal of St. Augustine's School for Coloured Students,
+in Raleigh, N.C. In this Church Institute Rev. Mr. Hunter and his
+excellent wife are doing a grand work for the negro people of the
+South, on lines somewhat similar to those followed by Booker T.
+Washington at Tuskeegee. We also noticed at the Convention and
+Missionary Services the Rev. William Wilmerding Moir, B.D., the
+zealous missionary at Lake Placid, N.Y., in the Diocese of Albany.
+His Missions, which have been phenomenal in their growth, are St.
+Eustace-by-the-Lakes and St. Hubert's-at-Newman. Under his sowing
+beside all waters, the Adirondack wilderness, in the field committed
+to him, is blossoming as the rose. Never was missionary more
+indefatigable and self-denying than he, and his rich reward now is in
+the possession of the confidence and love of his flock. It shows what
+a true and beautiful life can accomplish for the Divine Master and for
+the souls of perishing men, when the apostolic injunction is observed
+to the letter,--"Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ
+Jesus." This is indeed the true spirit in all missionary labours; and,
+thank God, it animates the Church in all its fulness, as evidenced
+here in San Francisco in the devising of methods for the extension of
+the Gospel of the Kingdom!
+
+During the last hour of the final session of the Convention, Rev. Dr.
+William R. Huntington, Rector of Grace Church, New York city, a man
+whom every one who knows him respects and honours for his learning,
+his eloquence, his integrity, his character as a man, his devotion
+as a Clergyman, to the Church, and his love for his Divine Master,
+created a sensation by a speech which he made. Indeed it was dramatic
+in its character, and it made a profound impression on all who heard
+it. As he spoke, a deep silence came over the members of the House. As
+is well known, Dr. Huntington has for years advocated an amendment to
+Article X of the Constitution by which there should be given to the
+Bishops of the Church the spiritual oversight of congregations not in
+communion with the Church, allowing the Bishops to provide services
+for them other than those of the Book of Common Prayer. This subject
+was debated at length, and at last, to harmonise all interests, a
+Committee of Conference was appointed from both Houses. Finally the
+Committee reported two resolutions for adoption,--the first, that
+Article X of the Constitution is to be so interpreted as not
+restricting the authority of the Bishops, acting under the Canons of
+the General Convention, to provide special forms of worship; and the
+second, that the Bishops have the right to take under their spiritual
+oversight congregations of Christian people not in union with
+the Church, and that the use of the Book of Common Prayer is not
+obligatory for such congregations, but no such congregations shall be
+admitted into union with a Diocesan Convention until organised as a
+Parish and making use of the Book of Common Prayer. The first was
+adopted, and the second lost. Dr. Huntington then arose and moved
+a reconsideration of the vote on the Report of the Committee of
+Conference. Having made his motion, he said, with evident feeling and
+pathos in his voice: "I may perhaps be allowed in advocating this
+motion to say a single word of a personal character, or partially of a
+personal character. I desire to say that I entertain the same faith
+in the final victory of the principles which I have had the honour to
+advocate in three previous Conventions that I ever have entertained.
+Individuals may rebuke me because of too great persistency and because
+of too much presumption. Great measures, if I may be pardoned in using
+a political phrase, may be turned down for the time. They cannot be
+turned down for all time. You have chosen your course for the present
+with reference to the great question of the opening century. I
+acquiesce. I resign to younger hands the torch. I surrender the
+leadership which has been graciously accorded me by many clerical and
+lay members of this House. The measure I advocated has been known as
+the iridescent dream. I remember who they were who said, we shall see
+what will become of his dream. In time they saw. But for the present
+it is otherwise. The Chicago-Lambeth platform has been turned
+down, and what I hope I may characterise without offence as the
+Oxford-Milwaukee platform is for the time in the ascendant. I accept
+the fact. My 'iridescent dream' shall disturb their dreams no more. I
+recall a saying of my old friend Father Fidele, whom we used to know
+in our college days as James Kent Stone. When he went over to Rome he
+wrote a book with the title, 'The Invitation Heeded,' and the best
+thing in it was this: 'I thank heaven that I have reached a
+Church where there is no longer any nervousness about the General
+Convention.' There is no probability, sir, of my heeding the
+invitation that he heeded, but henceforth I share his peace." The
+motion to reconsider the vote by which the first resolution of the
+Committee of Conference was adopted, was lost; and then Dr. Huntington
+retired from the House. Soon after the Bishops sent to the Deputies in
+Message 93, the same Resolutions as having been adopted by them, and
+asking the House of Deputies to concur. The motion prevailed by a
+large vote, and the victory came for the good Doctor, who thought he
+was defeated for the present, much sooner than he had expected.
+
+The closing service of the Convention, on Thursday afternoon, October
+the 17th, was a memorable one. The imposing array of Bishops in their
+robes, the presence of the House of clerical and lay deputies, and
+the hundreds of San Francisco's citizens who thronged Trinity Church,
+together with the inspiring hymns and the reading of the Pastoral
+Letter by Bishop Dudley, who used his voice with great effect, made
+a lasting impression on all present. With the solemn benediction by
+Bishop Tuttle at 6:30 P.M., the great Council of 1901 was a thing of
+the past, but though its sessions were ended and become a matter of
+history, its effect could not be undervalued. It was a great advantage
+to the churchmen from all parts of the land to meet in San Francisco.
+In their journeyings from the East and other portions of the country
+between the Atlantic Ocean and the Rocky Mountains they had an
+opportunity of studying the far West, and they realised more than
+ever how great is the extent of the country, how inexhaustible its
+resources; and they were stirred up to greater missionary activity and
+more liberal giving. The wide domain between the Rocky Mountains
+and the Sierras and the rich valleys of California bordering on the
+Pacific Ocean, inviting enterprising agriculturalists from all sides,
+were indeed an object lesson. The civilisation of the West too is the
+civilisation of the East, and the Church, with her adaptability, is
+as much at home by the Golden Gate as in New York or Boston or
+Philadelphia. The Convention will help the Church in California. Its
+influences have gone out among the people in healing streams. Its
+character and work were a revelation to the populations by the
+Pacific; and already men who knew but little about the strength of our
+great American Church, its order, its catholicity, its aims, have been
+greatly enlightened and drawn to its services. They realise more and
+more what a mighty agency it is for good, how it promotes all that
+is best in our civilisation, and how it adds to the stability of the
+institutions of the land.
+
+The character of the men and women whom the Church trains for
+citizenship and usefulness in the world is seen in two beautiful lives
+whose labours were finished, in God's Providence, by the waters of the
+Golden Gate. Mrs. Mary Abbott Emery Twing, of New York, widow of
+the late Rev. Dr. Twing, for many years Secretary of the Board of
+Missions, had travelled across the continent to be present at the
+meetings of the Woman's Auxiliary, of which she had been the first
+active Secretary. But sickness came, and after a few days she was cut
+down like a flower. She was a woman of a lovely character, devoted to
+the service of her divine Master like the Marys of old, and was a type
+of the tens of thousands of the Church's faithful daughters throughout
+the land. As she has left a holy example of missionary zeal and
+labour, so her good works follow her. The other life of which we speak
+is also an eminent example of love for God's Church, of faithfulness
+and good works. John I. Thompson, one of the most esteemed citizens of
+Troy, N.Y., though hardly in a condition physically to make the long
+journey to San Francisco, yet felt it his duty to be in his seat in
+the Convention. So he counted not his life dear unto himself, but
+with that sense of duty and spirit of self-sacrifice which always
+had characterised him he was found in his place at the opening and
+organising of the Convention, in Trinity Church, and answered the
+roll call. Exposures by the way had made inroads on his health and
+gradually he lost his strength until death finally claimed him on the
+evening of Wednesday, October the 16th. The next day the Convention
+passed the following resolution: "_Resolved_, That the members of this
+Convention have heard, with deep regret, of the death of Mr. John
+I. Thompson, a lay deputy of the diocese of Albany, and they hereby
+express their warm and tender sympathy for his family in their sore
+bereavement." But what a deathbed was his! What a testimony to the
+power of a living faith in Christ! He died as he had lived, a truly
+Christian man, illustrating the power of that Gospel which the General
+Convention is pledged to propagate and defend. With him, in the Palace
+Hotel, were those whom he loved best of all, his devoted wife, who
+had accompanied him, and his faithful son, who had hastened from the
+distant East to the chamber of sickness; with him too betimes the
+Bishop of Albany, whose tender words and loving ministrations were
+an unspeakable comfort to him; with him also his beloved Rector, Dr.
+Edgar A. Enos, of his dear St. Paul's Church, to break for him the
+bread of life and press the cup of salvation to his lips, and pray for
+him as he walked through the valley of the shadow of death, and to
+commend his departing soul to God. He knew he was going away from
+earthly scenes, and with faith and hope, he leaned on the arms of his
+Lord. Trained from his childhood in the ways of the divine life, and
+having walked like the holy men of old in the paths of righteousness,
+he had no fear as his feet touched the Dark River. He was ready to
+launch his soul's bark on the ocean of eternity. Methinks I see his
+purified spirit passing out through the Golden Gate yonder, but to
+sail over a sea more calm than the Pacific. It is eventide now, but
+"at evening time it shall be light;" and the light of God's eternal
+city is shed across his pathway as the Divine Pilot guides him through
+the Golden Gate of Paradise to the harbour of peace!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THROUGH THE CITY TO THE GOLDEN GATE
+
+A Well Equipped Fire Department--Destructive Fires--Scene at
+the _Call_ Office--Loyalty to the Flag--The Blind Man and Bobby
+Burns--Street Scenes and Places of Interest--Market Street
+System--Mission Dolores--Effect of Pictures--Franciscan
+Missionaries--A Quaint Building--The Mosque a Model--The Presidio--The
+Spanish and American Reservation--Tents--Cemetery--The Cliff
+House--Sutro Baths--Museum--Seal Rocks--Farallones--Golden Gate--What
+it Recalls--Golden Poppy--John C. Fremont--Drake and the Golden
+Hind--A Convenient Harbour--First to Enter--With the Indians--Child of
+Destiny--A Vision of Greatness--Queen of the Golden Gate.
+
+
+Our walks hither and thither in San Francisco will lead us to many
+interesting places, and at times into the midst of exciting scenes.
+There is an onward sweep of the current of humanity, which is
+exhilarating in a high degree; there is activity on all sides; and
+you soon catch the spirit of the place. Men have a purpose in view,
+something to accomplish; and there is the entire absence of lethargy;
+there are no drones in the great hive. You realise that you are in a
+city of distances as well as surprises; and wherever you go you find
+some object or locality or happening that calls for comment. Hark!
+there is the fire alarm. The engines and hose-carts and fire ladders,
+with other apparatus, pass you as in the twinkling of an eye; and so
+skillful are the fire-laddies, and so well equipped is the department,
+that the devouring flames rarely ever make headway. They are quickly
+mastered. But it was not always so. There was a period about fifty
+years ago when great and destructive fires succeeded one another like
+a deluge and wiped out large portions of the growing city. There was
+then a woful lack of water, which is now most abundant, and the fire
+engines were very primitive in character and inadequate to the needs
+of the place. To-day every precaution is taken to guard against fire,
+and the great business blocks and the miles and miles of handsome
+homes are well protected.
+
+I visited the central department, and it was most interesting to note
+the appliances of other days. It almost excited a smile to see the
+simple hand engines and old fire-extinguishers. On the walls of the
+"Curiosity-Shop" where these mementoes of other days were exhibited,
+not far from the Chinese quarter, were photographs of the members of
+the department, of past years; and among the faces were some of the
+most distinguished citizens of San Francisco. All honour to the men
+who protect our homes thus, who respond quickly to the fire bell which
+startles the ear in midnight hours, who risk their lives for the sake
+of others, who evince such hardihood and perform acts which are truly
+heroic! Some old inhabitant, if you question him, will go back to the
+past and tell you in graphic language about the disastrous fires which
+have swept over the city laying large portions of it again and again
+in ashes. The first, which was of consequence occurred in December
+1849. Then the loss was estimated to be a million of dollars. On May
+4th 1850 there was another fire which was a heavy blow to the business
+interests of the town. A third fire broke out in June 14th, 1850, and
+still another on September 17th, 1850, causing great loss. But, as the
+climax, came on May 3rd, 1851, what is known as "the great fire."
+At the time the chief engineer and many of the firemen were in
+Sacramento, and this greatly crippled the service. The fire-fiend
+held carnival for twenty-four hours, and property, valued at twenty
+millions of dollars, was consumed, while many of the people perished
+in the flames.
+
+On Sunday, June 22nd, 1851, there was still another ruinous fire which
+raged among the homes on the hillsides and in the residence-districts
+generally. This was accompanied with a most pathetic incident. While
+the flames were raging around the Plaza, a man who was very sick was
+carried on his bed into the midst of the open place, and there while
+a shower of flame was rained on him and smoke blinded his eyes his
+spirit passed to his eternal home in the Heavens. But although San
+Francisco had met with all these losses in rapid succession, partly
+the result of incendiarism and partly by reason of a lack of fire
+equipment, yet the people, brave-hearted and unconquerable, rebuilt
+their city on broader and safer lines; and the San Francisco of
+to-day, so attractive and prosperous and beautiful, may be said to
+have risen Phoenix-like out of her ashes. So it is that evils are
+overruled for good in God's Providence, and the fine gold comes out of
+the fire of discipline, tried and precious! Our walks now will lead
+us up through the city to the Mission Dolores, the Presidio, and the
+Golden Gate. But as we proceed up Market Street we take note of some
+features of the life of San Francisco. Behold, here is an eager group
+of men and boys in front of _The Call_ office. They are scanning the
+bulletin of the day's news from all parts of the world, which will be
+published in to-morrow's _Call_ or in the _Chronicle_ on the north
+side of the street. In the early part of my sojourn in this city by
+the Golden Gate I was impressed with this aspect of life here. It
+was on Thursday the 3rd day of October that I saw a crowd of men of
+various ages, and boys also, reaching out into the street, besieging
+the bulletin board of _The Call_, at the corner of Market and Third
+Streets. Why are they so deeply absorbed and why so interested? They
+are reading the news of the victory of Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan's
+_Columbia_ over Sir Thomas Lipton's _Shamrock_ in the great yacht race
+in New York waters, in the cup contest. Had this international race
+taken place outside of their own Golden Gate, on the broad Pacific,
+they could not have evinced greater enthusiasm and pride at the
+result. The pulse of San Francisco is quickened and the heart thrilled
+at American success on the Atlantic seaboard as much as Boston or New
+York is elated when it triumphs. Distance is nothing. It is America
+from Sandy Hook to the Golden Gate. The one thing that impresses you
+here in San Francisco is the intense patriotism of the people, and
+your own heart is warmed as you see the evidences of loyalty to the
+flag. I could not but be touched too at the devotion which the people
+everywhere displayed to the memory of President McKinley. Even in
+Chinatown a deep sentiment prevailed, and his draped portrait with his
+benignant countenance might be seen in houses and stores and in other
+conspicuous places.
+
+As you walk leisurely along you will see on the sidewalk, on the south
+side of the street, west of the Palace Hotel and opposite No. 981,
+a newstand with American flags decorating its roof; and you will be
+interested in the man who stands in his sheltered place behind the
+counter on which are the daily papers. It is George M. Drum, a blind
+man. Poor Drum, a man about fifty years old, lost his eyesight in a
+premature explosion of giant powder, in a quarry near Ocean View, on
+the 3rd of November 1895. Yet he takes his misfortune cheerfully. He
+is chatty and witty and somewhat of a poet and is the author of a
+highly imaginative story about a "Bottomless Lake" and a "Haunted
+Cavern" in which that strange character, Joaquin Murietta, well known
+in all California mining camps fifty years ago, figures. This Joaquin
+Murietta has also been the theme of the "Poet of the Sierras," Joaquin
+Miller. Indeed it was from this "Joaquin" that Miller has taken his
+name Joaquin, being otherwise called Cincinnatus Heine Miller. It was
+my custom to purchase _The Call_ and _The Chronicle_ each morning from
+Mr. Drum; and on the second time that I saw him he said, "I wish to
+shake hands with you; I know you." "Who am I?" I asked, with no little
+surprise. Said he, "You are Bobby Burns." "Bobby Burns!" I exclaimed;
+and, thinking only of the Ayrshire poet, I said, "Burns is dead!"
+"Oh," he said, "there is a man here in San Francisco, whom I call
+Bobby Burns, and T thought that you were he." So the mystery was
+explained; and I could not but reflect that many other things which
+puzzle us are just as easy of solution when we have the proper key to
+them.
+
+If your walk is extended into the evening through the brilliantly
+lighted streets, which electricity makes almost as bright as day, you
+will meet here and there detachments of the Salvation Army and the
+American Volunteers; then you will see a group of men around some
+temperance lecturer or street orator. You will also hear the voice
+of some fakir selling his fakes or wares, or some juggler who is
+delighting his audience with his tricks of legerdemain.
+
+If you desire to make purchases of silver articles or gold ornaments
+you will go to Hammersmith and Field's at No. 36 Kearney Street; and
+if you wish to spend an hour pleasantly and profitably among books on
+all subjects, you will visit No. 1149 Market Street or 704 Mission
+Street. Here you will learn that books on California, whether old or
+new, are in great demand. Indeed all books relating to the Golden
+State are eagerly sought for; and if you chance to have any such you
+will be reluctant to part with them. They increase in value year by
+year.
+
+The Club life of San Francisco is an important element; and it will be
+an easy matter for you to find admittance to the Pacific Union Club,
+the Cosmos Club, or the Bohemian Club, if you have the indorsement of
+a member. A letter of introduction or commendation from a clergyman or
+some well-known public man will secure for you the Open Sesame at any
+time; and here you can pass an hour pleasantly and meet the foremost
+men of the city, physicians, clergymen, lawyers, merchants, and army
+officers.
+
+But we hasten on now to the old Mission Dolores. Let us board the
+street car which leads to its door. Meanwhile we have an opportunity
+to study what is called the Market Street system. Rumour hath it that
+the street railways will soon pass into the hands of a syndicate with
+capitalists from Baltimore at the head of it. The estimated value of
+the various lines is said to be over fourteen millions of dollars.
+These cars are excellent in service, and they climb up the hills of
+San Francisco with perfect ease. You feel, on some of the lines, as
+ascent is so steep, that the car is about to stand on end, and you
+cling to your seat lest you lose your balance; but you are perfectly
+safe. They will take you in every direction as they run through all
+principal streets and out to Golden Gate Park and the Cliff House as
+well as to distant points in the suburbs of San Francisco.
+
+Away back in the early days of the city the Mission was reached by a
+plank road from the shores of the Bay; but now you ride to its doors
+in comfort. The Mission Dolores located in the western part of the
+city will always be a place of special interest. It carries you
+back to 1776, the same year in which the American Colonies declared
+themselves to be free and independent of Great Britain. The Mission
+was founded under the supervision of Padre Miguel Jose Serra Junipero,
+a native of the island of Majorca, who was born on Nov. 24th, 1713. At
+the age of 16 years he joined the order of St. Francis of Assisi, and
+in 1750 he went as a missionary to the city of Mexico. It was in 1769
+that he arrived in San Diego and established its Mission. Proceeding
+up the coast he founded other Missions, and his desire was to name one
+in honour of the founder of his order. Said he to Don Jose de Galvez,
+the leader of the expedition from Mexico to California, "Is St.
+Francis to have no Mission?" The answer was, "Let him show us his
+port, and he shall have one." In consequence of this the San Francisco
+Mission was established. The solemn mass which marked its foundation
+was celebrated by Padres Palou, Cambon, Nocedal and Peña; and on the
+occasion firearms were discharged as a token of thanks to God,
+and also for the purpose of attracting the Indians, though it was
+difficult for them to understand it. The Indians were hard to win at
+San Francisco, but a piece of cloth, with the image of "Our Lady
+de Los Dolores," on it, was exhibited to them and it produced a
+marvellous effect. Pictures seem to have a peculiar attraction for the
+savage mind. In the Church of Guadaloupe, Mexico, you may see a large
+painting of the Mexican Virgin with Indians crowding around her.
+The effect of pictures is well illustrated by a scene in the ninth
+century, as when, in answer to the request of Bogoris, King of the
+Bulgarians, the Emperor Michael, of Constantinople, sent to him a
+painter to decorate the hall of his palace with subjects of a terrible
+character. It was Methodius, the monk, who was despatched to the
+Bulgarian court on this mission, and he took for his theme the Last
+Judgment as being the most terrible of all scenes. The representation
+of hell so alarmed the king that he cast aside his idols, and many of
+his subjects were converted. The Franciscans in their work both in
+Mexico and in California understood well the value of pictures in
+convincing the untutored mind. Hence it was the custom to have
+pictures of heaven and hell on the walls of the Missions. They were
+better than sermons. The name of the Mission here was at first, simply
+San Francisco de Asis. Then in time Dolores was added to indicate
+its locality, because it was west of a Laguna bordered with "Weeping
+Willows" or because three Indians had been seen weeping in its
+vicinity. Naturally the title of the Virgin would be applied to the
+Mission,--Nuestra Señora de Los Dolores, "Our Lady of Sorrows." In
+this Mission, as well as in the others, the Indians were in a certain
+sense slaves, as the Fathers controlled all their movements. The
+religious instruction was of the simplest character. The life of the
+convert also was somewhat childlike, in marked contrast with his
+experience in his savage condition. His breakfast consisted of a kind
+of gruel made of corn, called Atole. The dinner was Pozoli, and the
+supper the same as breakfast. The Christian Indians lived in adobe
+huts--of which the Padres kept the keys. Some of the Missions were
+noted for their wealth. For example, as you may read in the Annals of
+San Francisco, the Mission Dolores, in its palmiest days, about the
+year 1825, possessed 76,000 head of cattle, 950 tame horses, 2,000
+breeding mares, 84 stud of choice breed, 820 mules, 79,000 sheep,
+2,000 hogs, 456 yoke of working oxen, 18,000 bushels of wheat and
+barley, $35,000 in merchandise and $25,000 in specie.
+
+Such prosperity in time was fatal to the Missions. The spiritual life
+was deadened, and in time it might be said that Ichabod was written on
+them. The glory has departed. The early Franciscans were men of deep,
+religious fervour, self-denying and godly. They did a splendid work
+among the Indians in California. Father Junipero was a saintly man,
+full of labour, enduring hardships for Christ's sake, and he is worthy
+of being ranked with the saints of old. Padre Palott was a man of like
+character, and there were others who caught the inspiration of his
+life. When Junipero knew that his pilgrimage was about ended he wrote
+a farewell letter to his Franciscans; and then, on the 28th of August,
+1784, having bade good-bye to his fellow-labourer, Padre Palou, he
+closed his eyes in the last sleep, and was laid to rest at San Carlos.
+The lives of such men make a bright spot in the early history of
+California; and as most of its towns and cities have San or Santa as a
+part of their names it is well to recall the fact that the word Saint
+was not unmeaning on the lips of those Franciscan Missionaries who
+laboured on these shores and taught the ignorant savage the way of
+life. On the day when Doctor Ashton and I visited the Mission Dolores
+we were deeply impressed with what we saw. There stood the old
+building, partly overshadowed by the new edifice erected recently just
+north of it. Yonder were the hills, north and south and west, which
+from the first had looked down upon it; but the old gardens and olive
+trees which had surrounded it for many years were gone, and instead
+the eye fell on blocks of comfortable houses and streets suggestive of
+the new life which had taken place of the old. The bull-fights which
+used to take place near this spot on Sunday afternoons are things
+of the past happily, and the gay, moving throngs, with picturesque
+costume of Spanish make and Mexican hue, have forever vanished. The
+old graveyard with its high walls on the south side of the Church
+remains. Tall grass bends over the prostrate tombstones, a willow tree
+serves as a mourning sentinel here and there, while the odours of
+flowers, emblems of undying hopes, are wafted to us on the balmy air
+as we stand, with memories of the past rushing on the mind, and gaze
+silently on the scene. The building looks very quaint in the midst of
+the modern life which surrounds it. It is a monument of by-gone days
+with its adobe walls and tiled roof. Its front has in it a suggestion
+of an Egyptian temple. Its architecture is Spanish and Mexican and old
+Californian combined. You can not fail to carry away its picture in
+your memory, for without any effort on your part it is photographed on
+your mind for the remainder of your days. These old Mission buildings
+of California and of Mexico too are all very similar in their
+construction. Some have the tower which reminds you of the Minaret
+of a mosque. I fancy, as the idea of the Mission building with its
+rectangular grounds, generally walled, came from Spain, that the
+mosque, with its square enclosure and houses for its attendants, was
+its model. The Moors of Spain have left their impress behind them
+in architecture as well as in other things. They borrowed from
+Constantinople, and the City of the Golden Horn has extended its
+influence in one way and another over all the civilised world. But
+Dolores is crumbling, and its services, still held, and its "Bells,"
+of which Bret Harte sang so sweetly years ago, can not arrest its
+decay. In it is seen "the dying glow of Spanish glory," which once,
+like a cimeter, flashed forth here. Yet, though a building fall and
+a nation be uprooted, "the Church of Jesus constant will remain,"
+shedding its glory on generation after generation and beautifying the
+human race!
+
+Let us now pursue our walk in a northwesterly direction to the
+Presidio. The descendants of the old Spanish families in San Francisco
+pronounce the word still in the Castilian way, with the vowels long,
+and the full continental sound is given. This makes the name very
+musical as it is syllabled on their lips. What is the Presidio? This
+was originally the Military Post of the Spaniards, but it is now the
+Military Reservation of the United States. We are carried back to the
+old Spanish days as we tread the well kept walks of this garrisoned
+post. It was on Sept. 17, 1776, as we learn that it was established.
+There were four of these Presidios in California, one at San Diego,
+the second at Santa Barbara, the third at Monterey, and the fourth
+here by the waters of the Golden Gate. They were built on the lines
+of a square, three hundred feet long on each side, and the walls were
+made of adobes formed of ashes and earth. Within this enclosure were
+the necessary buildings, of the simplest construction, such as the
+Commandante's house, the barracks, the store house, the shops and the
+jail. The government buildings as a rule were whitewashed. The chief
+object of the Presidios was to give protection to the Missionaries and
+guard them against the Indians. The full complement of soldiers in
+each Presidio was two hundred and fifty--but the number rarely reached
+as high as this. The soldiers in those early days were not, as a rule,
+of the highest standing. Many of them were from the dregs of the
+Mexican army, and among them were men sometimes who had committed
+crime and were in a measure in banishment.
+
+There could be no greater contrast possible than that between the
+Presidio of Spanish days and the Presidio of the present time, both
+as to the place and the personnel of the officers and men of the
+garrison. As you look around you now your eyes rest on wide and
+handsome parade grounds, on beautiful gardens where flowers bloom
+in luxuriance, on groups of the Monterey Cypress, on neatly trimmed
+hedges, on walks in many places bordered with cannon balls, on
+attractive buildings which have a homelike aspect with vines climbing
+the walls, on barracks where the soldiers are made comfortable. The
+Presidio looks like a settlement in itself, and is very picturesque.
+I will not soon forget the beautiful, balmy afternoon, when I walked
+through the grounds on my way to the hills above the ocean. Here
+everything was suggestive of forethought, of care, of order, of
+dignity. The Reservation stretched out on every hand and over to the
+shore of the Bay northward where it has a water frontage of at least a
+mile and a half. In all its area it embraces a landscape, varied and
+undulating, of one thousand, five hundred and forty-two acres. It is
+a noble park in itself and well may the nation be proud of it. The
+Presidio was first occupied by United States troops in 1847, on March
+4th, when the sword was trembling in the weak hands of Spain. On
+November 6th, 1850, President Millard Fillmore set these grounds apart
+forever as a Military Reservation. As I walked on, before me to the
+west, rose hundreds of tents in which were soldiers, some of whom had
+returned from the Philippine Islands, and others of them were soon
+to embark for the Orient. Yonder too is the cemetery, where, as on
+Arlington Heights above the Potomac, sleep the Nation's dead; and
+
+  "There Honour comes, a pilgrim gray,
+  To bless the turf that wraps their clay."
+
+After your visit to the Presidio you will naturally desire to go to
+the Cliff House, that world renowned resort on Point Lobos south of
+the Golden Gate, and about seven miles distant from the City Hall.
+Thousands frequent this favoured spot annually, and especially on
+Saturday afternoons is it thronged. You can reach the Cliff either by
+the street cars going by Golden Gate Park, or by the electric railway
+which skirts the rocky heights of the Golden Gate. This last was our
+route, and the return journey was by the street railway. A Mr. Black
+and a Mr. Norton, two of San Francisco's prosperous business-men, were
+going thither also, and, seeing that we were strangers, they with true
+California courtesy gave us much information and showed us favours
+which we valued highly. As we sped westward, on our right was Fort
+Point just rising above tide water with its granite and brick walls
+and strong fortifications and powerful guns guarding the entrance to
+the Bay of San Francisco.
+
+Close by the Cliff House, and north of it, are the famous Sutro Baths,
+always well patronised; and the lofty, vaulted building in which they
+are located impresses you greatly as you enter it. It stands on the
+shore of the sea, reaching out into the deep; and the waters, which
+fill the swimming pools of various depths, flow in from old ocean in
+all their virgin purity. Here you will find all the best equipments
+and conveniences of a bath house.
+
+After bathing you may ascend to a long gallery of the building, where
+is a museum with a valuable collection of Indian relics and stuffed
+animals and archaeological specimens, and even mummies from old Egypt
+in their well preserved cases. The view from the heights above the
+Cliff House is magnificent. Almost at your feet, about two hundred
+and fifty yards from the shore, are the Seal Rocks rising up in their
+hoary forms from the sea and against whose sides the waves dash from
+time to time in rythmical cadence. Here are hundreds of sea-lions,
+young and old, basking in the sun or disporting themselves in the
+waters, and ever and anon you hear their roaring, reminding you that
+here is nature's grand aquarium. As you look northward you see the
+rocky shores of the ocean for miles, while to the south your eyes rest
+on a receding beach; and in a direct line some twenty miles westward
+are the Farallones or Needles, a group of seven islands consisting of
+barren rocks, the largest of which, comprising some two acres in area,
+has a spring of pure water and is surmounted by a lighthouse. Here too
+are vast numbers of sea-lions and wild birds of the sea, which make
+these islets their home, nothing daunted by the billows which roll
+over them in wind and storm. Surely it is a picture of the steadfast
+soul in the midst of commotions, when the waves of the sea of human
+passions "are mighty and rage horribly!" As you look out toward the
+Farallones, as lights and shadows fall on them, you almost imagine
+that they are ships from distant shores ploughing their way to the
+Golden Gate. But what of the Golden Gate, on which our eyes now rest?
+The name naturally recalls to mind the "Golden Gate" in the wall of
+Theodosius, in Constantinople, with its three arches and twin, marble
+towers, now indeed walled up to prevent the fulfillment of a prophecy
+that the Christian Conqueror who is to take the city will enter
+through it. A similar belief prevails concerning the Golden Gate of
+the Temple Area in Jerusalem, which is also effectually barred. But
+whoever named it doubtless had in mind the "Golden Horn," that noble
+right arm of the Bosphorus, embracing Stamboul and its suburbs for
+five miles up to the "Sweet Waters of Europe." There are indeed some
+correspondences between the two. As the wealth of the Orient flows
+into the Golden Horn, the harbour of Constantinople for many
+centuries, so the riches of commerce, the products of great states
+west of the Rocky Mountains, and the treasures of the Pacific, pass
+through the Golden Gate. The Golden Gate too is about five miles in
+length, although at its entrance it is a little over a mile wide and
+widens out as you sail into the great Bay of which it is the outlet.
+This is located in latitude 37° 48' north and in longitude 122° 24'
+32" west of Greenwich, and has a depth of thirty feet on the bar while
+inside of its mouth it ranges from sixty to one hundred feet. The
+shores are a striking feature, and on the south side range from three
+hundred to four hundred feet in height, while on the north the
+hills, in places, attain an altitude of two thousand feet; and these
+adamantine walls, witnesses of many a stirring event in the history of
+California, are clothed in green in spring-time, while in autumn
+they are brown, and from the distance resemble huge lions, couchant,
+guardians of the Gate. But who gave it its name, and why is it so
+called? These were my questions. Among the residents of San Francisco,
+whom I asked, was a Señora whose countenance plainly indicated her
+Spanish descent, and she said it took its name from the Golden Poppy
+of California. This was the Gateway to the land of the Golden Poppy.
+The Poppy is called Chryseis at times, after one of the characters of
+Homer; and it is also known by the Spanish name, especially in the
+early days, Caliz de Oro, Chalice of Gold. Another designation, used
+by the poets, is Copa de Oro, Cup of Gold; while in Indian legends it
+has sometimes been styled, "Fire-Flower" and "Great Spirit Flower." It
+was the belief among the Indians, when they saw the people flocking
+for gold from all directions, that the petals of the "Great Spirit
+Flower," dropping year after year into the earth, had been turned into
+yellow gold. The Golden Poppy, the State Flower of California, blooms
+in great profusion and with marvellous beauty on hillside in plain and
+valley, in field and garden, by lake and river, from the Sierras to
+the shores of the Pacific, and it is especially abundant on the hills
+which skirt the shores of the Golden Gate. Indeed in spring time these
+are one mass of gold; and hence it would not require much imagination
+to coin the magic name by which the gateway to one of the grandest
+Bays in the world is known. An old Californian song well describes the
+beauty and luxuriance of this suggestive Flower.
+
+  "O'er the foothills, through the meadows,
+  Midst the canons' lights and shadows,
+    Spreading with their amber glow,
+    Lo, the golden poppies grow!
+  Golden poppies, deep and hollow,
+  Golden poppies, rich and mellow,
+  Radiant in their robes of yellow,
+    Lo, the golden poppies grow!"
+
+
+The honour of having named the Gate, however, is generally conceded
+to General John C. Fremont. In his "Memoirs" he says: "To this Gate I
+gave the name of Chrysopylae or Golden Gate, for the same reasons that
+the harbour of Byzantium (Constantinople) was named the Golden Horn
+(Chrysoceras)." It has been hinted nevertheless that Sir Francis Drake
+gave it its appellation; and if this be so the euphonious name would
+be suggested by his ship in which he sailed along this coast, the
+_Golden Hind._ At first the ship bore the name of _Pelican_, but
+at Cape Virgins, at the entrance to the Straits of Magellan, Drake
+changed it to the _Golden Hind_, in honour of his patron Sir
+Christopher Hatton, on whose coat of arms was a Golden Hind. Not
+without interest do we follow the fortunes of this ship. When finally
+she was moored in her English port after her voyages, and was put out
+of commission as unseaworthy, and fell into decay, though guarded with
+care, John Davis, the English navigator, had a chair made out of her
+timbers, which he presented to the University of Oxford, still guarded
+sacredly in the Bodleian Library. No wonder that Cowley, while sitting
+in it, wrote his stirring lines, and apostrophised it as "Great
+Relic!" How noble this thought.
+
+  "The straits of time too narrow are for thee--
+  Launch forth into an undiscovered sea,
+  And steer the endless course of vast eternity;
+  Take for thy sail, this verse, and for thy pilot, me!"
+
+Had we stood on these lofty shores by the Golden Gate in the early
+summer of 1579 we would have descried the _Golden Hind_ ploughing
+the waters of the Pacific northward. Her course was as far north as
+latitude 42° on June 3rd. Owing, however, to the cold weather Drake
+returned southward to find a "convenient and fit harbour" for rest and
+refitting of the vessel; and, as one of the narrators of the voyage
+writes, "It pleased God to send us into a fair and good bay, with a
+good wind to enter the same." Was this what is known as Drake's Bay or
+popularly as Jack's Bay, southeast of Point los Reyes, or was it the
+Bay of San Francisco? Justin Winsor, in his Narrative and Critical
+History of America, and Hubert Howe Bancroft, in his History of
+California, discuss this matter in an exhaustive manner; and the
+reader after sifting all the evidence afforded, will still be free to
+form his own judgment. Some writers, wishing to give the glory to the
+Spaniards, arrive at conclusions hastily, though of course a name like
+that of Bancroft carries great weight and his arguments deserve the
+highest consideration. The question then is, Was the _Golden Hind_ the
+first ship to cross the bar and pass through the Golden Gate, in the
+name of Queen Elizabeth of England? Or was it Juan Bautista de Ayala's
+ship, _San Carlos_, in August, 1775, in the name of Charles III. of
+Spain?
+
+It seems to the writer that a man of Drake's discernment and
+perception and experience would not be likely to pass by the Golden
+Gate without seeing it and entering it. True, it may have been veiled
+in fog, such as you may see the trade winds driving into the Bay
+to-day often in the afternoon, but there are many hours when the Gate
+is clear and when it could hardly escape the notice of an experienced
+seaman. The intercourse of Drake with the Indians who crowned him as
+king, the services used on these shores out of the old Book of Common
+Prayer by "Master Fletcher," the _Golden Hind's_ chaplain, the naming
+of the country Albion from its white cliffs in honour of Britain's
+ancient title, and the taking possession of it in the Queen's name,
+and many other interesting things, are all told in the old narratives,
+as you may find the story in Hakluyt's Collection; and most edifying
+is it, opening up a new world and making a romantic chapter in the
+early history of California. The centuries have rolled on since that
+time: California has become one of the brightest jewels in the
+crown of the Republic; San Francisco has been born and has attained
+greatness never dreamed of by those pioneers who laid her foundations,
+and before her is a grand career owing to her position and character.
+She is the child of destiny, with her sceptre extended over the seas
+which bind to her the great Orient. When John C. Calhoun was Secretary
+of State he laid his finger on the map where San Francisco stands now,
+and said: "There, when this Bay comes into our possession, will spring
+up the great rival of New York." Give San Francisco a history as long
+as that of New York, and then see what mighty force she will develop.
+Has she not at her feet all the great States which stretch out beyond
+the Rocky Mountains? Has she not the homage of all the Pacific coast
+lands with their untold wealth? And are not her perpetuity and
+greatness assured? "Whoever," says Sir Walter Raleigh, "commands the
+sea commands the trade of the world, and whoever commands the trade of
+the world commands the riches of the world, and consequently the world
+itself." True is it that San Francisco commands the riches of Alaska,
+the commerce of China and Japan, the wealth of the Sandwich Islands
+and of the Philippine Archipelago as well as the products of the South
+Seas, and what more can she desire? Her cup, a golden cup, is full to
+overflowing; and I see the years coming, in the visions of the future,
+when the city will cover, like a jewelled robe, the whole Peninsula
+as far south as San Jose and will embrace within her government the
+flourishing towns upon the beautiful shores of her great Bay. Yes,
+Alameda and Oakland, Berkeley and Benicia, Vallejo and Saucelito, and
+the villages as far north as San Rafael with all their rich fruitage,
+will sparkle in her diadem, and teeming millions will be enrolled
+within her borders rejoicing in her prosperity and her grandeur. All
+the advantages of Tyre and Corinth and Alexandria, of the ancient
+world, are her heritage without the elements of decay which led
+to their downfall; and if she but hold fast the principles of
+righteousness, which are the best bulwarks of a city or state, she
+will continue to reign as a queen to latest generations, sitting on
+her exalted throne by the Golden Gate!
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12883 ***