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diff --git a/old/vigsf10.txt b/old/vigsf10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0e7b82b --- /dev/null +++ b/old/vigsf10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2954 @@ +The Project Gutenberg Etext of Vignettes Of San Francisco +by Almira Bailey + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg file. + +Please do not remove this header information. + +This header should be the first thing seen when anyone starts to +view the eBook. 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We need your donations. + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a 501(c)(3) +organization with EIN [Employee Identification Number] 64-6221541 +Find out about how to make a donation at the bottom of this file. + + +Title: Vignettes Of San Francisco + +Author: Almira Bailey + +Release Date: November, 2003 [Etext #4643] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on February 20, 2002] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +The Project Gutenberg Etext of Vignettes Of San Francisco +by Almira Bailey +******This file should be named vigsf10.txt or vigsf10.zip****** + +Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, vigsf11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, vigsf10a.txt + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we usually do not +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +The "legal small print" and other information about this book +may now be found at the end of this file. Please read this +important information, as it gives you specific rights and +tells you about restrictions in how the file may be used. + +*** +This etext was produced by David Schwan <davidsch@earthlink.net>. + +Vignettes Of San Francisco + + + +By +Almira Bailey + + + +Vignettes + + + +Title + +As Pilgrims Go to Rome +At the Ferry +The Union-Street Car +The Latin Meets the Oriental +The Pepper and Salt Man +The Bay on Sunday Morning +Safe on the Sidewalk +Port O'Missing Men +Market-street Scintillations +Cafeterias +The Open Board of Trade +The San Francisco Police +A Marine View +Hilly-cum-go +I'll Get It Changed, Lady +Fillmore Street +In the Lobby of the St. Francis +The Garbage-man's Little Girl +The Palace +Zoe's Garden +Children on the Sidewalk +Feet that Pass on Market Street +Where the Centuries Meet +Bags or Sacks +Portsmouth Square +Miracles +Impulses and Prohibitions +Stopping at the Fairmont +San Francisco Sings +Van Ness Avenue +The Blind Men and the Elephant +You're Getting Queer +The Ferry and Real Boats +A Whiff of Acacia +It Takes All Sorts +The Fog in San Francisco +A Block on Ashbury Heights +The Greek Grocer +Billboards or Art +Golden Gate Park +Extra Fresh +On the California-street Car +Western Yarns +Mr. Mazzini and Dante +On the Nob of Nob Hill + + + + +Vignettes of San Francisco + + + +As Pilgrims go to Rome + + + +In the same way that the poets have loved Rome and made their +pilgrimages there - as good Moslems travel toward Mecca, so there are +some of us who have come to San Francisco. Then when we arrive and find +it all that we have dreamed, our love for it becomes its highest +tribute. And I don't know why it is sacrilege to mention Rome and San +Francisco in the same breath. As for me I greatly prefer San Francisco, +although I have never been to Rome. + +I love San Francisco for its youth. Other cities have become set and +hard and have succumbed to the cruel symmetry of the machine age, but +not San Francisco. It is still youth untamed. They may try, but they +cannot manicure it, nor groom it, nor dress it up in a stiff white +collar, nor fetter it by not allowing a body to stretch out on the grass +in Union Square or prohibiting street-fakers and light wines served in +coffee pots and doing away with wild dashing jitneys. + +Then there is something about San Francisco's being away out here from +everyone else, a city all alone. New York is five hours from Boston; +Philadelphia is close between New York and Washington; Baltimore is a +trolley ride away; Chicago is only overnight from all the other cities, +while Atlanta is only two sleeping car nights from her sister cities. +But San Francisco, out here as far as it can reach with one foot in the +great Pacific, nearly a week from New York and a month away from China, +some people wouldn't like it, but something vagabondish in me rejoices +to have run away from them all. Especially at night when the fog comes +in on the city and shuts out even Oakland, and fog horns out of the +Golden Gate call mournfully, and boats in the bay go calling their +lookout calls, I get this feeling of far-offness from the rest of the +world that is very gratifying. + +And I love the sound of San Francisco, the sound of its singing - some +cities roar and others hum, but San Francisco sings. And I love the look +of it and the feel of it. I love to stand, on its hills in the mornings +when the bride-veil fog is going out to sea and the smoke and steam and +fog and sunshine make one grand symphonic morning song. And I love to +stand on high hills on clear days when all her cubist houses stand bold +in the sunlight and the cities across the bay are so close to the touch. +And I love its color, flowers and girls and splashes of the Oriental. +And I love its Bohemia which is not affected, but real. I love it +because it is young and live and spontaneous and humorous and +beauty-loving and unashamed of anything that is life. Oh, I don't know. + +If I were in New York and it should begin to suffocate me I would run +and run across the continent and never stop once until I landed on the +top of Telegraph Hill. + + + +At the Ferry + + + +The shrill of newsboys, the bass of older venders, the call of taxis, +trolleys that proceed all day in ordered sequence, the wide swing of +traffic on the Embarcadero, a tang of salt in the air, the atmosphere of +flowers for sale, hoarse call of ferries in the bay like politicians who +have spoken too much in the, open air and lost their voices, the +beautifully ordered hurry and bustle and expectancy of people on their +way somewhere, and over it all the mentor of the police. + +"Help pass the time pleasantly," so does the electric piano coax away +our nickels. To those who know music it is a horrible sound, but to the +rest of us its tunes are rather gay. On the wall a defunct comedy +flashes. Hypnotized, but never amused, we gaze at it as we wait for the +great doors to swing back. A woman is thrown from an auto by her +husband, and in her fall displays a pair of husky, ruffled underwear. +Time was when that would have raised a howl of joy, but no longer. She +hardly touches the ground when we find ourselves gazing at an orchard of +California figs, zip, the woman picks herself up, gazes comically at the +audience for a laugh and receiving none, hops with phenomenal agility up +astride of the hood of the auto, piff, a yard of Santa Rosa hens, ping, +the husband throws his wife up to the roof of a skyscraper, the +commuters gaze solemnly, biff, a scene from Santa Clara, clang, the +gates are opened. + +On the Sausalito side, a jammed together happy vacation crowd, +grotesquely varied and elaborately gotten-up hikers, bags and suitcases +to fall all over everywhere, professorish looking men off, "taking a +book along," people laden with all the cheap magazines in the market, +smartly dressed people on their way to country homes in Marin and +Sonoma, a well modulated, nicely groomed crowd - bing, the doors slide +back and everybody rushes off for a holiday. + +Commuters and tourists, most of the time I'd rather be a tourist. They +are easily distinguished in the crowd, an accent from Louisiana, a woman +who has just returned from the Orient, a man with continental manners, +they are easily distinguished. and the predatory red-capped porters know +them well. We are wistfully sorry to be going only to Oakland, we long +to go out on the Main Line, the out-leading, mile-wandering, venturesome +Main Line. Reluctantly we turn to where duty and necessity calls us +ignominiously to the electric suburban. + +The first sight of San Francisco. "Ah, this is San Francisco!" The +shrill of newsboys, the bass of older venders, the flash of electric +signs. Do you prefer "Camels", "Chesterfields" or "Fatimas"? the call of +taxis, invitations to hotel buses, the wide sweep of traffic on the +Embarcadero - "So this is San Francisco." + + + +The Union-Street Car + + + +It is surprising how many people patronize the shabby little thing. But +then it waits right where those who leave the ferry may see it first as +though it were the most important car in town, and I have a fancy the +big cars humor it a bit and give it first place. Besides, it goes +anywhere in the city, Chinatown, the Hall of Justice, the Chamber of +Commerce, the Barbary Coast, St. Francis Church - sinners, saints and +merchants may travel its way - Portsmouth Square, Telegraph Hill, Little +Italy, Russian Hill, Automobile Row, Fillmore street, the Presidio and I +expect with a little coaxing it would switch about and run over to the +Mission. It has actually been known on stormy nights to take its +constituents up the side streets to their very doors. + +It is a surprising little boat which looks like nothing more than a bug +crawling up the backs of the hills with its antenna of khaki-wound legs +sticking out fore and aft. Those who have traveled in Ireland tell us +that it is much like the jaunting cars, and it is not unlike the +Toomerville Trolley. + +One night I set out to find the little thing to take me home. I was in a +strange part of the city and when my friends told me to get on and get +off and get on again I did as I was told. With blind faith I told the +conductors to put me off and they did. I continued in this way until +long after midnight when I found myself at a lonely corner with no one +in sight. I waited and waited and was getting nervous when I spied a +blue uniform. I looked sharply to see if he were a motorman, a fireman +or an officer from the Presidio. I am careful about these matters since +last summer when I was coming North on the President, and asked a naval +officer for some ice water. I rushed up to him and told him, which was +true, that it was the first time I had ever seen a policeman when I +wanted one. This led him into a defense of the San Francisco police, +which I told him was quite unnecessary with me for I thought them the +finest policemen in the world, probably because they are so Irish. + +"Irish," said he with a twinkle, "I'm not Irish." + +We chatted awhile until the Union street car came along, and then that +policeman who said he wasn't Irish leaned over and whispered +confidentially, "If you miss this car, there'll be another." I suppose +they get lonesome. + +You see how I am wandering away from my subject. That is because I +followed the Union street car. It switches from subject to subject just +like that. It begins with the wonderful retail markets of San Francisco, +and then changes abruptly to all sorts of sociological problems, then +before we know it gives us a beautiful marine view, and then drops us +down where the proletariat lives, then up to the homes of the rich and +mighty, and ends in the military. + +Everyone should sight-see by the little Union street car. + + + +The Latin Meets the Oriental + + + +In that spot where Chinatown merges into the Latin quarter there must +be, I think, a Director of Delightful Situations who holds dominion +there. For instance, can you imagine anything more subtle than a group +of large fat women haranguing, in Italian-American, a poor thin Chinaman +over some bargains in vegetables? + +In a place which marks the line of cleavage between the two quarters is +a picture store containing in its window religious pictures, enlarged +family photographs of Filipinos, and, of course, views of the Point +Lobos cypress. There is something very appealing about that window. +Pictures of Jesus, no matter how lurid they are, never fall short of +dignity. And it seems not at all incongruous that He should be there in +the midst of all those strange human contacts. + +There are not only contacts between the Latin and the Oriental, but +anything unusual may come to light in that particular neighborhood. A +buff cochin rooster was wandering about the street the other day. +Stepping high and picking up choice tidbits and showing off before his +harem of hens who peeked at him from their boxes, he strutted about +exactly as though he had been in his own Petaluma barnyard. + +One day I saw an enormous negro running through the streets with a piece +of new, green felt bound around his stomach. Now why should a huge negro +run through the street with a piece of new green felt around his +stomach? No one knows. And another time a small Chinese maiden bumped +into me because she was so absorbed in that great American institution, +the funny sheet. + +On one of those side streets, in there somewhere, one of those streets +untoured by tourists, I saw some Chinese boys, dressed in American "Boss +of the Road" unionalls, playing baseball and calling the call of Babe +Ruth in sing-song Chinese. Then near them was an empty lot and what do +you suppose it was filled with? Scotch thistles, and edged with wild +corn flowers. Even Nature enters into the fun. + +There is a story of an Italian who went through the streets somewhere on +Leavenworth, calling, "Nica fresha flowers," and from the opposite side +of the street a Chinaman with flowers would call, "Samee over here." All +went well until the Chinaman began to outsell the other, when the +Italian remonstrated. "Yella for yourself, see," he said, to which the +Chinaman answered, "Go to hellee," and went on as before. + +This story was told to me by very reliable eye witnesses. The buff +cochin rooster and the huge negro and all the others I saw myself. And +many other strange things which I have not room to write, I saw in that +spot where Chinatown merges into the Latin quarter. + + + +The Pepper and Salt Man + + + +He was a man, I should say about sixty years old, a most uninteresting +age, and a homely, weather-beaten fellow too, when you stopped to look +at him. His suit was pepper-and-salt, and he was just like his suit. +Good as gold, I have no doubt, a roomer of whom his landlady could say: +"He comes and he goes and is never a speck of trouble." + +Still, he might have been as good as Saint Anthony but no one would ever +have noticed him except for what happened. What happened wasn't so much +either but it was enough to illumine that dun, common-place man so that +everyone in the side-seating trolley was suddenly aware of his presence. +What happened was ten months old and was a girl. + +A regular girl, one hundred per cent feminine. One could tell just by +the way she wore her clothes, by her daintiness, by the tilt of her +bonnet and by the way smiled out from under it. I can't describe a baby +girl any more than I describe a sunset or moonlight or any of the +wonders of God - I can only say that she was everything that a baby girl +should have been. + +When she entered with her mother we all edged and crowded over but the +pepper-and-salt man won. Down she sat close beside him. Then you should +have seen that man, the foolish, old fellow. He turned toward her; he +beamed; he mentally devoured her; he never took his eyes off her long +enough to wink. + +When she seemed about to turn her restlessly bobbing head toward him, +his hands moved and the strong muscles of his face worked in excitement. +Then, when she smiled his way and for an instant there was a flash of +tiny, milk teeth, that man, the old silly, made the most dreadful facial +contortion, something between a wink, a smile, a booh and a grimace. + +Then when she turned from him he sat there eating her up. I saw him look +reverently at her exquisite hands and at the awkward little legs +sticking out straight ahead. When her mother arranged her ruffles he +watched every move - absorbed. Then he would wait eager, hoping and +praying for her to smile his way again. . . + +Why, I was waiting for her smile too and so was every one of the staid +and grown-up people in the car. I don't know when we would ever have +come out from the spell of that ten-months-old baby girl if just then +the conductor had not called out reproachfully - "Central Avenue - +Central Avenue." Then the pepper-and-salt man jumped and looked +nervously out and rushed for the door. I, myself, had to walk back two +blocks and when I turned at my corner he was still going back to his +street. + + + +The Bay on Sunday Morning + + + +Perhaps to go to Fort Mason on a sunny Sunday morning, that beautiful +relaxed moment of the whole week, and there to sit with others who have +no autos to go gallivanting in, and to sit idly gazing off at the bay. +That's not bad. To read a little and doze a bit, but mostly to gaze out +to sea and dream. + +A big foreign steamer in port, perhaps a Scandinavian boat, inert, +enormous, helpless, while the little tugs chatter, around it and finally +get hold of it, and tug it slowly around with its nose pointing out to +sea. Lumber schooners come in slowly and rhythmically, long and low and +clean. The Vallejo boat, looking like a rocking horse, goes importantly +chugging off toward Mare Island. It's hard to read a book with so going +on out there. + +Sunday morning, blessed play time, there is a fellow in a green canoe, +and the muscles of his body play into the movement of the waves until he +and his green canoe and the white capped waves are all one motif of the +whole symphony. Men play around the yacht club like a lot of school +boys, and now - "Shoot," they push a long slim racer into the water. +Dainty white yachts go dipping to the waves and seem like lovely young +girls in among the sturdier boats. + +Now the fishermen come in from their night's work, making music all in +an orderly procession, and every boat of them a brilliant blue inside. +I'd like to catch a Maine fisherman allowing color in his boat, like a +"dago" or a "wop." + +Over all the swing and dip and rhythm of the sea gulls. How beautifully +they accent the movement of the symphony, like the baton of some great +leader - this great beautiful Sunday morning symphony. + +Then there is Alcatraz. Oh, Alcatraz, why should they have placed a +prison there as a monument to men's failure to order their lives in +harmony with nature. Alcatraz, most beautiful island in the most +beautiful bay, you sound an ugly, sinister, most unhappy undertone in +the morning's symphony. + +Still it is a symphony. A symphony of San Francisco Bay. Why shouldn't +the composers put it into music. We're sick of the song of the huntsman +by the brasses, the strings and the wood instruments. With Whitman we +exclaim: "Come, Muse, migrate from Aeonia," and come out here to the +West, and conserve the symphony of the bay which is already composed and +waiting. + +And for the argument, the overture, the prelude, there could be a +sailing schooner with sails all set coming into the Golden Gate, in the +full brilliant sunlight, or mysteriously through a fog, or against a +sunset sky. It should be "full and by" like that beautiful painting by +Coulter in the stock exchange of the Merchants' Building. + +Symphony of San Francisco Bay, boom of fog horns, calls and answers of +the ferries, chug of the fishermen's boats, twink of lights in the +harbor at night, rhythm of sea gulls, and the brooding fog to soften it +all. "Come, Muse, migrate from Aeonia." + + + +Safe on the Sidewalk + + + +Are there others, I wonder, who feel as I do about crossing the street? +There must be. Now I, when I cross, say Market street at Third, I run. I +take my life and my bundles in my hand and run, darting swift glances to +the left and to the right. It looks "hick." I know it looks "hick." And +I care. But I prefer to be alive and countrified than sophisticated in +an ambulance and so I run. + +At corners, too. I think corners are worse. For there the machines may +turn around and chase me, which they often do. It's a horrible feeling. + +There must be others who feel as I do about crossing the street, but +they never betray it. I watch to see and when they cross, they just +cross - that's all. Not with nonchalance exactly, but with ease and +assurance. Once I actually saw a man, a native son, I'm sure, roll a +cigarette as he crossed at a point where even the traffic cop looked +nervous. + +No one ever gets killed or even injured. But always everybody is getting +almost killed and almost injured. They like it. It's a sort of sport. +I've noticed it more since the city's gone dry. The game is, if you are +walking, to see how close to a machine you can come and not hit it. + +Street cars, machines and people all go straight ahead and they all come +out right. It's the only city where it's done with such abandon. They +never stop for anything except taxis - not even fire engines. + +The secret of it is, I think, that no one ever hesitates. This is +understood by all San Franciscans - that, no one is ever going to +hesitate. That's why there are no accidents. It's the unexpected in +people that makes disasters and creates a demand for traffic cops. + +I try to cross the street as others cross. I choose a chalk mark and, +pretending I am a native daughter, launch out. I get on fine - suddenly +a monster machine is on me. Or would be if I did not jump back. I +shouldn't have jumped back it seems. But how was I to know? In the jaws +of death you don't reason, you jump. In jumping back I hit another +machine and it stops. And that stops a street car. That stops something +else. And in a minute Market street, the famous Market street, is all +balled up because I jumped back. Drivers, red in the face, swear at me, +not because they are cross, but scared-more scared than I. + +Next time I am more careful. I look to the traffic cop for attention +but, being a handsome man, he thinks I'm trying to flirt. Policemen +should be homely. So I wait until the street is entirely empty. I wait a +long time - it is empty - I run like a steer - and suddenly out of +nowhere a machine is yelling at me individually and I know no more +until, breathless and red, I reach the haven of the sidewalk. + +Once I heard a horrible story of a man who lost control of his machine +and ran up on to the sidewalk. + + + +Port O'Missing Men + + + +They say that San Francisco is known all over as the Port o' Missing +Men. That it is a city where a man may lose himself if he chooses, and +that by the same token it is a good place to look for "my wandering boy +tonight." I can believe all this especially on Third street. Third +street should be called by some other name or it should have a nickname. +If it were in Seattle it would be known as "skid row." Third street +doesn't describe it at all. + +When I see a lot of men like that, wanderers, family men out of work, +vagabonds, nobodies, somebodies, "rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief; +doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief," I always get to thinking how once each +one was a tiny baby in a thin white dress, and how before that each one +of them was born of a woman. If I could ever forget that, I could +perhaps sometimes call men "a lot of cattle." Come to think of it, it is +men who call other men "cattle." At any rate, I like to think that no +woman would ever see men as less than the sons of mothers. + +The Port o' Missing Men is like the Port of San Francisco, and these men +are like boats in from a foreign port, tramp steamers some of them, out +of nowhere, going nowhere, no baggage, no traditions, men who'll never +get lost because they are on their way to Nowhere. + +Yet, the majority of these men are going to some place, but where I do +not know. What do they talk about in groups down there, tall, young +fellows and strong middle-aged men and reminiscent, old ones down in the +Port o' Missing Men? If they're out of work where do they sleep at +night, and what do they have to eat? And have they any women folks? + +Not all kinds of men are down there, but many kinds. There are Mexicans, +Sinn Feiners, old American stock, and once in awhile a venturesome +Yankee. There are lumberjacks in from the North, and Chinamen in +shuffling slippers, and philosophers and Swedes, half-breeds and just +plain men. Some are Vagabonds who can't help their roving, and others +are very tired and would like to lie over in port for or a long spell. +There are Italians, and Portuguese, and many Greeks, and turbaned +Hindus, tall and skinny, always traveling in pairs like nuns. Sometimes +the Port is fairly crowded. + +New England is a section of the country where men leave home, and I have +heard mothers sing with tears in their voices: "Oh, where is my +wandering boy tonight?" On Third street down at the Port o' Missing Men, +I have a fancy that I would like to write back to all those mothers that +here are their boys. But, after all, what good would that do, for who +can tell which is which? + + + +Market St. Scintillations + + + +Oh, the things our eyes discover as we walk along on Market street. Such +a medley - infinite, incongruous, comical, pathetic, motley and sublime. + +Harding in a window with "pure buttermilk." He'll be in more difficult +situations before he is done, I'm thinking. An electric fan above him +that keeps the buttermilk "pure" and flies the American flag in crepe +paper. + +"Crabs to take home." They are freshly cooked, very large and forty +cents apiece. I decide that some I shall really buy one and take it home +when I confronted with the fact that "All Hair Goods Must Be Sold." Why, +I wonder. Why must they be sold? And here are "Eggs any style," so close +to the hair goods that I immediately visualize them as marcelled "style" +and pompadoured. + +"Shoes Drastically Reduced." It is the truth. The Oxfords I wear are +reduced by a drastic five dollars. Well, I couldn't go barefooted, I +comfort myself and hurry on. + +A shooting gallery and a man standing there trying to make up his mind +to try it. A second's glimpse of him and all that he is is revealed. One +knows immediately that his favorite song is "My Bonnie Lies Over the +Ocean," and that his ideal man is Governor Allen and that he is on his +way to spend his "remaining days" with his sister Lottie in Los Angeles. + +Who would eat "stewed tripe Spanish." Someone must or they wouldn't +advertise it on the outside of he restaurant. Well, it takes all sorts +of people to make a world. Probably the man who would order "stewed +tripe Spanish" wouldn't touch an alligator pear salad. To him alligator +pears taste exactly like lard. To the person who wouldn't eat "stewed +tripe Spanish" they are a delicacy. + +A crowd around a window. On your tip-toes to see. It's that fascinating +Lilliputian with a beard and electric bowels who stands in drug store +windows and administers corn cure to his own toes with a smile. + +The professional window shopper is a vagabond at heart - a loiterer by +nature. Here is one gazing in a photographer's window to discover +someone he knows. These two are not professionals though but a spring +couple looking in furniture windows for nest material. And sailors +wandering about, nothing but kiddies, lonesome looking and no doubt +wishing we were at War again and hospitable once more. + +Here is a "Pershing Market" and a "Grant Market," beside it. There's a +lot of that in San Francisco. Is there an "Imperial Doughnut?" Up goes a +"Supreme Doughnut" next door. It's the spirit of "I'll go you one better +every time." It's the spirit of Market street. + + + +Cafeterias + + + +This is not to hurt the feelings of anyone, for some people are very +sensitive about cafeterias. They are cafeteria wise, they have a +cafeteria class consciousness. Such people are to be admired. They have +accurate minds which enable them to choose a well-balanced meal at +minimum cost. Lacking that sort of mind, I do not get on well in +cafeterias. As sure as I equip myself with a tray and silver in a napkin +and become one of the long procession, I lose all sense of proportion, +and come out at the end with two desserts, or a preponderance of +starches or with too much bread for my butter, and a surprising bill. + +Those who are cafeteria wise can choose a good meal for 28 cents or 33 +cents at the most. They don't take food just because it looks delicious. +They "yield not to temptation." They have a plan and stick to it. Wise +and strong-minded, they shuffle their way bravely to the end. It is said +that in time they acquire a cafeteria shuffle which one can detect even +on the street. But I don't believe it's so. + +Other sections of the country have cafeterias and in some parts of the +South, especially in Louisville, they are run quite extensively. But it +is in the West, especially in California, that they have attained a +dignity and even lavishness that makes them the surprise and delight of +the tourist. Irvin Cobb says that this is the cafeteria belt of which +Los Angeles is the buckle. + +We have music in our cafeterias. We have flowers on the tables. People +don't just eat in them, they dine. They take their guests there. Our +cafeterias have galleries with rocking chairs and stationery. They have +distinctive architecture. We take visitors to see them. We brag about +them, and when we wish to be especially smart we pronounce them +caffa-tuh-ree-ah. + +Personally, I am proud of our cafeterias, but I do not get on in them. I +enter hungry. I look sideways to see what other folks are eating. I +decide to have corned beef and cabbage and peach short cake and nothing +else. Then in the line I have the hurried feeling of people back of me, +and that I ought to make quick decisions. Everyone ought to eat salad, +so I take a salad. Then some roast beef looks good so I take that, and +the girl asks briskly with a big spoon poised, if I'll take potatoes, +and I don't wish potatoes, but she makes a great nest of them beside the +meat and fills the nest with gravy and I pass on. According to Hoover or +Maria Parloa or Roosevelt, I ought to have a vegetable, and so I take +two. Meanwhile I have taken bread, but the woman ahead takes hot scones +and so I do. I choose some thick-creamed cake, very fattening, but just +this once, and then, oh, I don't know. The tray is heavy and no place to +put it, and in my journeying I peek at the bill and it's over 75 cents, +and when I finally sit down opposite a stranger I find on my tray two +salads, and when I chose the other I don't remember. + +But cafeterias are very fine for those who have cafeteria sense. + + + +The Open Board of Trade + + + +Months ago one of The Journal readers suggested a story to be found +down on Market street near the Hobart building. Many times since when +passing there I have thought that those street hawkers must have a +certain picturesque and even humorous value, and hoping to find it I +have stopped to listen. But the moment I stop they win me with their +everlasting logic, and then blessed if I can write them up. They have +the same effect upon others. I have seen chambers of commerce and stock +exchangers and professors from Berkeley passing with a supercilious +glance which did very well so long as they kept moving. But once let +them step into the magic ring and they too became mesmerized and stood +there gaping in spellbound interest. "Logic is logic, that's all I say." + +Those hawkers are artists, skilled in the arts and wiles of +persuasiveness. There is one with a long, horse-hair wig which he +occasionally brushes back from his eyes with a dignified flourish. This +man has found the supreme elixir and the secret of perpetuity. He is the +only man in the world, this modern Ponce de Leon, who knows the secret. +Surely we need not blush to listen to its exposition, $2 is a small sum +to pay for such a bonanza. Forty thousand people have used it in the +last thirty-nine days. Think of it. "Take it right out into the crowd +and sniff it for yourself," he urges and somehow that breaks the spell, +and strong men look foolishly at each other and move a-way. + +Horoscopes, suspenders, iron watch charms, brown cakes that may pass for +maple sugar, ironing wax, laundry soap or penuchia, a book on +Prohibition, mending wax and books of magic are all there. They are not +things which we particularly want, but that's the point. Anyone can sell +things that people want. But these men are professional persuaders of +men against their will whose mission it is to make people want what they +don't want. That's Art. + +The horoscope seller must have taken his degree from some college of +venders, his call has such finesse. I cannot reproduce the lilt of it - +"Here's where you get your horoscope, a dime, ten cents." It is +suggestive of the midways of country fairs, shooting galleries on the +Board Walk, and circuses in the springtime. "Here's where you get your +horoscope, a dime, ten cents." + +The little, old, blind man sitting there with one hand outstretched and +the other holding a book, his white hair and beard neatly combed, +reminds me of something Biblical and prophetic like pictures in old +churches. Alas! no one seems to buy his story of prohibition. I think he +would do lots better in Kansas or Iowa. A particularly fascinating one +is the man of mending wax who stands before his table like some +professor of chemistry with a tiny flame and saucers of mysterious +powders and, I almost said, a blow pipe. + +But, pshaw, I can't write them up. I take them too seriously. "Logic is +logic, that's all I say." + + + +The San Francisco Police + + + +The San Francisco police are the handsomest and most-willing-to-flirt +policemen in the United States, if not in the world. What a surly lot, +the New York policemen. They treat one as though he were a blackguard +for merely asking some direction. + +"What car shall I take for the New Jersey Central Ferry?" we ask. + +"Zippity-ip," he snaps, moving off. + +"What did you say?" we ask in timid desperation. + +"Zippity-ip," he yells, shaking his fist at us. + +But ask a San Francisco policeman the way and how different. He will +take your arm and smile down at you and even go away with you chatting +all the time - "Stranger here? Well, you'll never go back East again." +And somehow after that you never do. + +Of course, the San Francisco police are many things beside being +handsome and willing to flirt. But these are important qualifications +which, up to this time, have never had their place in journalism. Ah, +many a Raleigh and Don Quixote in the roster of the S. F. police. + +A policeman is all things to all people. What a policeman is depends +upon what we are. To those who are fast, either in reputation or +driving, he is a limb of the law to be either evaded or cajoled. To the +small boy he is a hero to aspire to become when grown. To the +public-spirited citizen of the reforming order he is a piece of +community linen to be periodically washed in public with a great hue in +the papers about graft expose. To almost anybody in the dead of night +with burglars prowling about, he is a friend to be called - in case one +has a nickel handy. + +But to the great army of women who are hopelessly respectable, the +policeman is something quite different. And what we women think of the +police is important. We pay taxes, we vote and we cross the street. We +like our policemen to be handsome and cavalier and, again I say, the +S. F. police are both. Any fine day they will make a funeral procession +out of the motor traffic to escort a nice woman across Market street. + +It goes without saying and is an unwritten law that policemen should be +Irish. I enjoy Greeks in classic literature or in restaurants, but not +as policemen. There is a saying in the city that when Greek meets Greek +they go together to get a job on the Market Street Railways. But when +they get upon the police force, I for one, shall move to the country. +Policemen should always be Irish. + +And handsome. This is a woman's reason, but listen: O men, are they not, +I ask, a part of the civic beauty of the city? Is it not important that +these animated equestrian statues should be gallant men upon noble and +spirited horses? And who is more imperial in the pictorial life of the +city than the officer on the Lotta Fountain pedestal by the raising of +whose sceptered hand the life of the city moves or stays. Yes, policemen +should be handsome and gallant. It is written. + + + +A Marine View + + + +Russian Hill had always seemed economically remote to me as an abiding +place until recently I was invited out where some people were living in +a modest apartment with a good view of the bay. And when they suggested +that I try to get an apartment over there I decided to do it. + +It was a beautiful morning when I started out. There stood Russian Hill +and as Gibraltar bristles with armaments so it glittered with windows +facing the sea and one of them for me. Perhaps I could get a few rooms +from a nice Italian family and fix them up. Ah, the Latin quarter, +Greenwich village, the ghosts of artists haunting the place, Bohemians, +enthusiasm, the lust for adventure. I bristled with personality. + +"Oh, you want a marine view," said the real estate man. "Not for that +price, lady." + +A "marine view." I didn't want a marine view; I only wanted one window +facing the sea. Surely with all those windows - . + +I left the real estate man and began wandering about. I asked a group of +Italian women and they exclaimed in a chorus "No marine views left." I +hadn't said a thing about a "marine view." I wandered further and it was +always the same. Some were smug and some were sorry but they all spoke +of a "marine view" in a certain tone of voice, as Boston people say +"Boston." + +It was getting hot. I could not remove my coat because my waist was a +lace front. Only a hair net restrained me from utter frumpiness. Still I +was not altogether beaten and when I came to a nice countrified looking +house standing alone in the midst of modern art and a man came out I +asked him. The moment I did there came into his eyes a hunted glitter +and he told me how he had held out against them and how he had been +besieged for years to rent his marine view and wouldn't. + +As I turned away I met an Irish delivery man and he said that there were +dozens of vacant apartments very reasonable and waved his hand vaguely +in the direction where I'd been searching. I like the Irish but his +cheerful fibbery was the last straw and I went home. + +The next day my friends called up and said that they had a marine view +for me. I was to live all summer in the apartment of the So-and-Sos +while they were away. So now I am. They are artistic and I drink my +coffee from saffron colored cups on a bay green table runner over a +black table under a turquoise blue ceiling with a view of the bay from +the window. + +But I am humble and if some day I meet a hot, tired looking woman who +can't find an apartment on Russian Hill, I shall say: "Shucks, a marine +view isn't so much." + + + +Hilly-Cum-Go + + + +This is a story for children, because they will know it's only fooling, +while grown-up people will believe it's true. + +The cable car isn't a car at all, children, but is a hilly-cum-go, a +species of rocking horse and a grown-up kiddie-kar. It is a native of +and peculiar to San Francisco, and is a loyal member of the N. S. G. W. +It has relatives in the South, and the electric dinkie that rolls up and +down between Venice and Santa Monica is its first cousin. Some say that +it is distantly related to the wheel chairs at Atlantic City. It is not +at all common. + +The men who run it are its Uncles. The parents live underground caring +for the young kiddie-kars. At times, if you peek down in that hole near +the Fairmont and are careful not to be run over you may see them +bustling about. Before she was married, the mama was a Marjory Daw of +the Daw family, famous see-sawers. The children take after their mother. + +The Uncles are very kind and pick the hilly-cum-goes up in their arms as +tenderly as a woman would. You must have seen them pick the little +things up and run with them across the streets out of the way of autos. +And at night they tuck them in their little beds and hear them say their +prayer which goes: + +Oh, dear me, I hope I'm able, +All day long to keep my cable. + +These hilly-cum-goes are not run by electricity at all, but just +pretend. They are run by three things - black magic, white magic and a +sense of humor. Black magic takes them up the hills, white magic +restrains them down, and the sense of humor is in the Irish conductors. +You may hear, if you listen, the magic coming out of the ground, +"Kibble-kable, kibble-kable," only fast as anything. At noon time it +goes "Putter, putter, putter," and at bed-time, "Kuddle-kiddie, +kuddle-kiddie." + +This magic is very, very important. Especially going down hill. Did you +ever, my dears, descend that precipice at the end of the Fillmore street +line? What is it that keeps you from landing flat on your nose on Union +street? Nothing but white magic. What is it that keeps you from shooting +from the Fairmont, straight down into the St. Francis? White magic. + +The sense of humor is also very important. Suppose a stout person gets +on, the conductor hops immediately to the opposite side for ballast. +That takes a sense of humor. If the hilly-cum-go is full of young +people, especially sweethearts, the Uncle jiggles the hilly-cum-go +horribly, but if old people are on it goes - "See-saw, Marjory Daw," +just gently. + +I trust, dear children, that all these facts will make you appreciate +more the hilly-cum-go, and when you sit on it so cosy, so intimate with +the street, riding along looking at the scenery, you will be thankful, +that poor old horses do not have to tug you up hill, and that you have +this sturdy little creature to haul you about. Nice little, old +hilly-cum-go. + + + +I'll Get It Changed, Lady + + + +This expressman was a regular San Franciscan. And there is such a thing, +you know, as a regular San Franciscan. He is a native son and more. His +speech betrays him. He calls a "car" a "cahh," and when he's surprised +he says: "Yeah"! He has a permanent laugh in his eyes, and the only +thing he gets mad about is prohibition. But the particular thing that I +started to say of him is that money is to him a thing to spend. Money is +an incident to life, that's all. + +He said it would be a "dollar, six-bits," and I was sorry, but I only +had a ten-dollar bill. When I said that, he just reached out and took it +from me, and said he'd get it changed, and disappeared. Now, the +significant thing, and the one that made him a regular San Franciscan, +was that he never dreamed that I would doubt his honesty in returning +with the change. And I didn't. It was this last that surprised me. If it +had been in New York - I gasp - if it had been in New York, no +expressman would have dared do such a thing because no one would have +trusted him, and if they had been so hick as to trust him, the +expressman would have had no respect for himself if he himself were so +hick as to return with the change. + +I never shall forget the shock of seeing a pile of newspapers in front +of a drug store, the day I landed in San Francisco, where men took their +morning paper and threw down a nickel, and even made change for a dime. +Right out on the pavement - a lot of nickels lying loose and no one +paying any attention. Why, in New York - well, it couldn't be done in +New York, that's all. + +It's not because San Francisco is not metropolitan. For San Francisco is +essentially a city just as Los Angeles will always be a terribly big +country village. It's not at all a matter of population. In Connecticut, +we always said that Bridgeport was a city, and New Haven which was +larger, was not. It's a bing, and a zip, and a tra-la-la-lah, that makes +one city a city and another not. I can explain it no other way. + +But with all its cityfiedness, there is a strange lack of suspicion, a +free and easy attitude toward mere physical money, that one finds in no +other large city except San Francisco. In the stores the clerks will +say: "Shall I put it in a sack?" and you answer just as they hoped you +would: "Oh, no, I'll slip it right in my bag." In New York as soon as +one did that she'd be nabbed on the way out for a shoplifter. + +Perhaps the constant use of silver money has had something to do with +the matter. Paper money can be tucked away. Silver is more spendable, +everyone knows that. Break a five-dollar bill into "iron men," and it's +gone, gone. And yet it can't be the use of silver money alone that +accounts for it. Reno has silver money, and yet there is little of the +old, free Western spirit left in Reno. + +No, it's something to do with San Francisco where suspicion doesn't yet +grip the hearts of men and where money is made to spend. + +San Francisco, the last stand of the old, free West. + + + +Fillmore Street + + + +I walk along on Fillmore street. I try to walk very fast with eyes +straight ahead. One needs a strong will to take a-walking on Fillmore +street and keep from spending all his money. In fact it is better to +have no money at all for then one is tempted to hold on to it. + +Everything in the world is in the windows on Fillmore street - +everything. There isn't a phase of human activity that isn't +represented. Every nation has left its stamp. Spain - tamales and +enchiladas. France - a pastry shop. Italy - spaghetti and raviolas. The +Islands have for sale all that's hula-hula. Here is a Hungarian +restaurant. And the "O. K. Shoe Shop - While U Wait" is pure American. + +There is "Sam's Tailor Shop." I feel as though I should know this fellow +Sam. Apparently he knows me from his chummy sign. Sam, Sam - I ought to +remember Sam. + +Do you wish to paint and varnish? Well, here you are. Or to be shaved or +have your eye-brows arched? Walk right in. Here is a place to learn to +paint china. Here are drugs, corsets, religion, fish, statuary, cigars +and choice meats all in a row. Meats, on Fillmore street, are always +"choice" or "selected" or "stall-fed." I doubt if you could get just +"meat" if you tried. Next to the meats, out on a table before a +second-hand book store is romantic, old "St. Elmo" of mid-Victorian +fame. He must have come West by the "Pony Express." + +I always stop, if I have time, to look at shoes to be mended. They are +like people who have fallen asleep in public, off their guard and at +their very worst. Take a shoe - a real, old shoe without a foot in it +and it looks so foolish, betraying so mercilessly its owner's bumps and +peculiar toes. There is pathos there, too. A scrub woman's run-down +shoes, a kiddie's scuffed-out toes, a man's clumsy, clay-stained boots +and the happy dancing slippers of a young girl. + +Back of the shoes - the cobbler. Cobblers are always philosophers. Not +pretty men, but thinkers. In their little, dingy shops they sit all day +with their eyes down, isolated from the "hum and scum" about them, to +the tune of their "tap, tap, tap," their minds are detached to think and +philosophize and vision. + +Now we are at the corner where we turn away from Fillmore street. There +is a window full of dolls. Such a lot of homely dolls. They don't make +pretty dolls any more. They make them to look like humans. "Character" +dolls they call them and they are "characters." Now, when I was a little +girl, they made dolls to look the way you wished human beings could +look. - It is not hard to turn the corner. + + + +In the Lobby of the St. Francis + + + +There is something about having money enough to stay at the St. Francis, +and to dine there and to wear smart clothes there that makes people step +out and act sure of themselves. Even when they can't afford it, and +their stay there is a splurge or an outing, they act just as sure and +stepping. And as for the people to whom the St. Francis is but an +incident they act sure because they were born that way. + +Never in my life have I seen such sure, well-dressed women as in the +lobby of the St. Francis. And I am no greenhorn at lobbies. I have +reviewed in my day some of the best peacock alleys in the country. There +is the New Willard. Now when I think of the New Willard, I see frumpily +dressed dowagers talking through their lorgnettes to moth-eaten +senators. The Selbach in Louisville, the St. Charles in New Orleans are +famed for their handsome women, but none are so free and proudly sure of +themselves on peacock alley as California women. No women dress as they +do either. They are not so chic as they are smart; their tailor mades, +their furs, their hats with a preponderance of orange, their +well-dressed legs and feet and a reserved brilliance that makes them the +finest-looking women in the United States. + +It is a fine pastime to step out from the surge of Life for a minute and +let it ebb and flow around one in the lobby of the St. Francis. Such a +pageant of individual stories. An exquisitely dressed young girl meets +another there, and soon two young chaps appear and they all begin +talking silly nothings, and laughing at each other's silly jokes, and +looking into each other's foolish young eyes much as lovers have always +done. A harassed business man rushes frantically to the telegraph desk +and wires his firm at Pittsburgh. Some staid, comfortably-fixed tourists +from Newton Center, Massachusetts, come in from sight-seeing and go up +to their rooms and quickly get their shoes off. A group of Elks come in, +arm-linked, and start one wondering about the enforcement of the dry +law. In and out among all these moving comedies and tragedies flits like +an orange-colored butterfly a little Oriental boy, an angel-faced page +goes calling "Mister Smith," and sober looking bell-hops stand alert to +the sound of "Front." + +A beautiful woman steps forward and meets a handsome man and they go to +dinner together, and somehow I don't think he is her husband and wonder +if she is a widow and decide that it is none of my business. If she has +a husband he is probably an "ornery" fellow who never takes her +anywhere. + +Everyone who passes by me looks alert, and sure, and happy and +prosperous, but I comfort myself that probably each one of them has as +much to worry about as I myself do. + + + +The Garbage Man's Little Girl + + + +This vignette is written because it can't help itself and carries with +it a hope that someone who reads it may know a little girl whose father +is a garbage man. Suppose that you can't think of anyone just now who is +a daughter to a garbage man, it is best to read this just the same for +you never know when you may meet her. + +When you do, tell her not to care too much when the children at school +tease her about her father and cry - "Phew - phew, here comes the +gar-bidge-Garrr-bidge-Garrr-bidge." Tell her at that time to try and +sustain her personal integrity with philosophy. It won't do her a +particle of good but tell her just the same. + +Tell her that her father is a terribly useful man. That if he should +fail to function, then the disposal of garbage would become an +individual problem and that the mamas of kids whose fathers are not +garbage men would be obliged to say to their husbands - "Ed, dear, don't +forget to take the garbage bucket to the public incinerator on your way +to the office." + +Tell her that just because her father collects dirt, it is no disgrace. +Tell her to look at the people in good standing who peddle dirt. Tell +her to look at the papers. Tell her to tell the world that it's better +any day to collect than to peddle dirt. + +Tell her that when her father, up on his great smelly throne, drives +around the corner of Powell and Geary that dressed-up folk needn't +disdain him so much. He's a sermon. They won't like him as a sermon so +much as a garbage man but he's a sermon just the same. The text is that +back of most things that are dainty and beautiful is the drudgery +worker. Tell her that there isn't an immaculate kitchen in San Francisco +that doesn't depend upon her father. + +Nor a feast at the Palace or the St. Francis. Tomato skins and the nests +that cauliflowers come in, and gnawed "T" bones. What would become of +them if she had no father. And coffee grounds and the nameless things +that have been forgotten and burned by the absent-minded. Tell the +little girl about Omar Khayyam and how he might have said - . + +Oh, many a charred secret into the garbage can goes +That from the kitchen range in blackened cloud once rose. +Tell her that there is a professor at Yale whose father was a junk man. +All this and more tell the garbage man's little girl. + + + +The Palace + + + +Someone was telling me of an old couple who lost everything they owned +at the time of the fire, and that they were very brave about it and +never broke down, and even helped others, but that when someone came +running up and said: "The Palace is on fire," they both sat down on the +curb and gave way completely to grief. + +And they say that after the fire the first piece of publicity which was +given to the world as a proof that San Francisco would come back, was +that the Palace would be rebuilt immediately. And a man from Virginia +City, a descendant of the Comstock days, told me that in Nevada they +speak of "The Palace" as Russians speak of the Kremlin as a pivot of +destiny. What I am trying to say, of course, is that the Palace is a +tradition just as the Waldorf-Astoria is a tradition, only not at all in +the same way. + +The Palace is a great place for women who are alone and a place where a +man may bring "the missus" with impunity. The Palace is stylish, +perhaps, but principally it is select. It suggests to me women who wear +suits of clothes, mostly dark gray, all wool and a yard wide, women who +wear two petticoats and Hanan shoes and Knox hats and who carry suit +cases covered with foreign express tags, and whom porters run to meet +because they know that these women may not be so stylish as they are +generous tippers. And the Palace suggests to me afternoon teas, and that +peculiar composite chatter of women's voices which is more like the +sound of birds in a flock, and which Powys speaks of as a strange +inarticulate chitter chatter which isn't really speech at all. + +The other day a well groomed young official from the hotel took me out +to see the famous old Palace bar and the beautiful Maxfield Parrish +painting above it. They have taken the rail away, and around the edge of +the bar they have built a nicely finished woodwork wall which looks +exactly like a great coffin, the coffin of John Barleycorn. After the +manner of my species I wanted to see over the edge and the young man, +thinking that I might be suspecting a blind pig, boosted me up to peck +over. I asked him why they didn't remove the bar entirely and he said +with unsmiling naivete that they were waiting "to see" and that they had +saved the rail, "in case." + +If I were a reformer I should agitate and have that remarkably joyous +and beautiful Parrish painting placed where it could be seen. I'd take +it out to some San Francisco school so that the dear Pied Piper and all +the little round kiddies running after should be a delight to school +children. + +And now I have come to the end and all that I have said is that the +Palace Hotel is the San Francisco tradition and everyone in the United +States knew that long ago. + + + +Zoe's Garden + + + +Zoe says emphatically that it is not her garden, but everybody's garden. +But it is her garden because she tends it, and every morning goes around +among her flowers lovingly, giving a little dig of dirt here, and tying +some frail sisters up there and then, with her scissors, clipping, +snipping and nipping away. Yes, it is Zoe's garden. + +Anything that has spunk to grow is welcome in this essentially San +Franciscan garden. And no one is allowed to bully the others. Big burly +geraniums and proud dahlias must keep in their places and give the +dainty lobelia, cinnamon pinks, oxalis and candy tuft their chance. The +oxalis! How we tended it in pots in New England, and out here in +California, bless its heart, it runs around like a native daughter. And +as for the fuchsia, how far it has grown from the blue laws. + +There is no formality in Zoe's garden. Marigolds go wandering about in +the most trampish manner, and poppies, because they are privileged +characters, spring up as they please. Then, as though the two of them +were not sufficient California gold, there is the faithful gaillardia +with its prim little sunflower-faces smiling up at their Mother Sun. + +It is a democratic garden, too. Golden rod and asters grow right in +among the aristocrats. Fancy the snubbing they would get if they once +ventured into a New England garden - Hm. There is freedom there, but not +license, and every opportunity for individuality. The gladiolas, +canterbury bells, gillie flowers and fox gloves grow as prim as in a +conservative English garden. Pansies smile in their little bed, and +although the nasturtium, the wild-growing, happy-go-lucky nasturtium, +goes visiting around among all his neighbors, he is never allowed to +interfere with those who wish to keep by themselves. The sweet peas +stay very close to their tradition of wire netting, but they are not +snobs at all, and give of their bounty to all who call. The sensuous +jasmine is there, and the cold puritanical ceneraria and old maids' pin +cushions, with fragrance of sandalwood. The red-hot-poker grows stiff +and straight, but the ragged sailor goes uncombed and untidy still. + +Cosmos is coming soon, dressed in her very feminine clothes, and the +coreopsis has come on ahead. All old-timers are represented there, +honeysuckle, wormwood, petunias, rosemary, gilias, mignonette, +heliotrope and foxgloves. If they can not all be there together, all are +there at some time in the summer. Montbretia, Japanese sunflower, +larkspur, columbine and gourds all have their time and place and +opportunity in this San Francisco garden. And the hollyhocks, the bossy +things, I've a mind to leave them out. Besides I know some gossip about +them. When Zoe was away to Yosemite one morning they were all leaning +over from too much moonshine or too much sunshine and - well, I won't +repeat what the marigolds told me about them. + +Besides it is time to come away from Zoe's garden, which is everybody's +garden. + + + +Children on the Sidewalk + + + +When you were a little girl, when you were a little boy, where did you +play? Was it in a barn? Was it a city park? Did you hunt gophers on the +plains of Iowa? Perhaps it was in a California poppy field. Perhaps a +graveyard. I played in one, and remember very vividly the grave of +Josephine Sarah Huthinson who died at the age of 11 months, and had a +little lamb on the top of her stone and an inscription: "Except ye +become as little children ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of +Heaven." Many delightful games we played around the grave of little +Josephine. + +Wherever childhood found us we played, and out of our environment and +often in spite of it, lived in a delightful world of our own into which +no grownup ever really entered. Now, you and I, grownup, walk along the +sidewalks of San Francisco and all we see under our calloused old feet +is a sidewalk. But to children even a sidewalk blossoms with +possibilities. Who but a child invented: "Step on a crack, you break +your mother's back." Only the other day I saw a kiddie avoiding every +crack and muttering some incantation as he walked along. + +And out of the sidewalk grew all the different types of kiddie kars and +coasters that are so prevalent. I saw a whole load of children zipping +down a steep San Francisco hill the other day much as we children +coasted down winter hills on wicked "double rippers." A hill and gravity +and a lot of kids, what possibilities. And out of the sidewalk have +evolved those nameless explosives that have been so popular over the +recent Fourth. A row of kids sitting on a curb, one of them darts out to +the car track, a car comes, great expectancy from the kids, terrific +noise, annoyed looks on the faces of sour adults, unbounded joy from a +row of kids sitting on the curb. + +Recently I saw a tomboy who had organized the children in her block, and +had confiscated an alley between two straight gray houses, and I don't +know what the game was but it entailed trips on a car down the alley and +a very bossy motorman, and "turns," over which everyone quarreled. + +Some dainty little Chinese girls were playing a sidewalk game with a +white stone which was a version of an old, old child game. The child +would hop to the stone and kick it away and hop to it again until she +missed, the object being to beat her opponent in the distance traveled. +And I saw some exquisite little Japanese girls playing jump rope and +chanting one of the numerous litanies that go with that beautiful game. + +The sidewalks of San Francisco. They are full of adventure. Robert Louis +Stevenson would have seen it all. But to our dull eyes are only gray +cement block. Just a sidewalk to us and to kiddies there are mountains +in which Roy Gardner hides, and woods, and Tom Mix on a horse dashes +right past us and we never see him at all. + + + +Feet That Pass on Market St. + + + +There is something about walking along Market street with the procession +of people that passes all day, ah, how shall I express it? It is +thrilling and it is amusing; it is cosmic and it is puny. It is often +ridiculous and always sublime. Sometimes when we are in most of a hurry +the consciousness of the procession will come to us. It is as though we +were one of a moving crowd that never began and will never end. At such +times we listen to the sound of their feet, the steady, unceasing step +by step, an endless tramp as though it were beating out the rhythm - +"Eternity, eternity, eternity." + +As we pass voices call to us from the wayside, a cripple so far down +below us on the very ground offering his silent pencils; the allurement +of flowers; a hoarse newsboy with his old, old face screwed into a +thousand anxious wrinkles; a blind man, silent supplicant, twirling his +thumbs; and from the windows the call of strawberries at 15 cents a +basket. Overhead an aeroplane hums its way and receives from us the +tribute of an upward glance. We gaze upward and think how many years +before our day aeroplanes were flying overhead in the dreams of men who +passed and passed in the long procession. + +Idly we glimpse faces that pass us in the procession that meets ours. We +pass them and are never the wiser for the struggle and tragedy that may +be going on behind their show of brave masks. A man clutching his last +dime and wondering whether to spend it for rolls and coffee or coffee +and rolls. A business man absorbed and a lady pondering deeply some +detail of her dress. A young girl with soft un-massaged chin hurrying to +keep a tryst with her "friend," and country folks, their feet sore on +the unaccustomed pavements, glad to be going home soon. + +It is such an orderly procession and although they all seem to be +walking along forever, there is an order in their going and each is on +his way. Each one is free to go to his own place and yet no one is free. +No one is free to leave the procession once he gets into it. Once a man +is born he's done for. + +Let him veer one iota from that procession and soon there will come +rumbling up to the curb a big black Maria and off he's whisked away from +his fellows. Let him but get into the wrong house or take the wrong +overcoat or chuck the wrong person under the chin - Pff! Let him forget +where the long procession leads and wander about a free spirit and his +wanderings will lead him to the madhouse. + +I love to be one of the procession that marches forever up and down +Market street, such a brave procession. + + + +Where the Centuries Meet + + + +She was a tourist and she had just finished Sing Fat's. As she passed +out of the door she said smugly to her companion - "I don't see anything +so wonderful here." + +I was standing right there and said I: "Madame, if you have been through +Sing Fat's and have failed, to see anything wonderful then you should go +home and give yourself the Benet test which is used to test the +intelligence of children." Oh, of course, I didn't say this so that the +lady could hear. The bravest speeches we humans make are never aloud. +Then I continued: "Madame, you may travel far in mileage but you will +never take anything back to Dingville, Kansas, richer than a souvenir +ash tray." + +Why, just to take a trip from Sing Fat's to the White House is a +tremendous journey if one has the perceiving faculty. In Sing Fat's a +bit of old Cloissonne, tiny pieces of enamel on silver, done with +infinite pains by hand labor, perhaps centuries ago, grown beautiful +with age. In the White House georgette flowers, exquisite things made +for the passing minute, a whiff and a whim and off they go. Just in +these two there is a meeting of the centuries, Handcraft Days and the +Machine Age - B. C. and A. D. - the oldest civilization in the world and +the newest. + +The most interesting thing in Chinatown are the Chinese. To some they +all look alike, but to me they seem very human and individual and +folksy. I find myself paraphrasing: "But for the grace of God there goes +John Bradford," and when I meet a crafty looking old Chinaman this +whimsy comes to me, "If Deacon Bushnell who passed the plate in the +Centerville Methodist Church had been a Chinaman this is the way he +would have looked." They are such small town folks. Even with the steady +cycle of tourists they gaze at each newcomer as though he were the +latest comer to Podunk. One day with a friend I called on a Chinese +girl, and all the large family and their friends gathered around and +discussed us and laughed among themselves and pointed at us. It was +embarrassing but I was never once conscious of rudeness, simply a +childlike curiosity and honesty. + +In Chinatown the other day a peddler was selling spectacles and somehow +the old men trying them on and squinting for "near" and for "far," +seemed so quaint and countrified and like a lot of old Yankees around a +country store trying to get a "new pair of eyes, by Heck." In Chinatown +the tong men do not seem at all real and the hair raising movie serial +with its Chinatown terrors, Buddhist idols that open and swallow the +movie actors and floors that drop into dungeons, seem very remote. + + + +Bags or Sacks + + + +"Do you like cafeterias?" I asked. + +"Don't know," he answered, "I've never played them." + +"What religion do you follow?" another man asked me. + +In a mining camp they told me to take such and such a "trail." + +The point is, that we did not talk that way where I came from. Of +course, I hasten to say, we doubtless talked some other way just as +peculiar. And if I could detect our colloquialisms I would write a lot +about them but alas I can't. I was in the West two years before I +noticed that a "trolley" is a "street car." + +A woman in a mining camp said to the stage driver, "I want out at the +bank because I don't want to pack this sack of silver." In the first +place we wouldn't have had a sack of silver and if we had, it would have +been in a "bag" not a "sack," and we never "pack" things and we never +"want out." + +In the East we never refer to our locality as "this country," as in the +West and South. We do not take the name of our state either as +"Californian" or "Kentuckian." One never hears of a "Connecticutian" or +a "Massachusettisian." I do not profess to give any reasons for these +peculiarities. + +In the West, speech is more brief. "Autos go slow" is the warning while +on the Fenway in Boston the signs read - "Motor Vehicles, Proceed +Slowly." I wouldn't swear to the comma but the words are identical. + +There is a small to near Provincetown where a sign reads - "Friends, we +wish to think well of you and we wish you to think well of us. Kindly +observe the ten mile motor limit." After that the roads are so bad that +one couldn't possibly exceed ten miles if he tried. Probably the longest +sign in California is that one which reads - "Drive your fool heads +off." + +"Booze-fighters" are Western. Oh, they're Eastern too, but under a +different name. It's a misleading term, that. As though one were +fighting against booze like an anti-salooner. I actually know of a woman +who came West and thought for or a long time that a "booze-fighter" was +a "Dry." In the East he is a "rummy" and when he's drunk he's "tight." + +"It's a fright," is Western. "Ornery," is middle-Western. That's a +wonderful word. Sometimes, I wish I could live my life over with +"ornery" in my vocabulary. It describes so many people I never knew just +how to classify. + +There are no "T" bones in the East. And scrambled brains are not common. +Oh, of course, we have them but not as something to eat. Personally, I +was brought up to reverence brains and when I see them lying pale and +messy on a plate in a Greek restaurant, I confess it gives me a start. + +Hot tamales have never crossed the plains East. And baked beans have +never come West - not real ones. The difference between the Eastern +baked bean and the Western is all the difference between a tin can and a +religious rite and it is the same with succotash. A cruller is only a +fried doughnut when it gets out West. Tea is more subtle in the East, +but out here the waitress will ask "Black or green" in a black or white +tone and stands over you until you decide. Maybe you don't want black +tea, maybe you don't want green, but just "tea," but there she stands in +her unequivocation - "Black or green?" + +Silver money has never traveled East. A man told me recently that he +didn't like silver money when he first came out here and that it was +always wearing his pockets out but since he'd gotten into Western ways +it never wore a hole in his pockets any more. In the East a change purse +is scorned by anything masculine, but here all the men carry one, I +don't know why not in the East, nor why in the West. Blessed old +"two-bits" and a "dollar six-bits" are the only woolly things left over +from the old wild West. + +What else - oh, I could keep on for pages. "Stay with it" is Western and +has lots more feeling I think than "stick to it." A Westerner when his +wife and babies were going back East to visit her relatives, telegraphed +to her brother - "Elizabeth and outfit arrive Tuesday." And until she +arrived the brother spent his time in conjecturing as to just what an +"outfit" would mean. Rhubarb plant is "rhubarb" in the East and also +"pie plant," and one day I was in a fruit store and when the man - he +was a Greek - yelled "Wha else?" I could only think of "pie plant" and +so I didn't get any. + +It's all the way you are "brought up," Eastern, and all the way you are +"raised," Western. + + + +Portsmouth Square + + + +"To be honest, to be kind." Loiterers, vagabonds, slow-going Orientals, +poets and blackguards, all day long come and drink at Stevenson's +fountain. Some of them look up and read it all and some only get as far +as "to earn a little, to spend a little less" - . + +Small-footed Chinese women pass, humping along on their stumps and their +babies running along beside have larger feet than the mothers who bore +them, Bench warmers gaze after them with lazy curiosity. A fat Italian +granddaddy washes a kiddie's hand from the fountain and a man with a +demijohn and a sense of humor goes smilingly down the path and what he +has in the demijohn is none of our business. + +"To make on the whole, a family happier for his presence." It is noon +and a bride has brought lunch for herself and her husband off the job in +his white overalls, and the two eat together on the beautiful grassy +slope. The poplar trees around Stevenson's fountain whisper poetry all +day long and the little iron boat on top looks sad not to be sailing +away on high adventure to the South Sea islands. + +"To renounce when it shall be necessary and not be embittered." A woman +with a baby carriage comes by. Something tender and sane and everyday +and basic about her and her baby. A Chinese woman passing looks for all +the world like a black and iridescent purple grackle in her shiny black +coat and shiny black pants and shiny black shoes and shiny black hair, +although the grackle has a prouder strut than her dancing little trot. + +"To keep a few friends and those without capitulation." Where, oh where, +do all the men come from who lie stretched out on the grass? I've seen +the very same men lying on Boston Common, and when my father was a boy +he said he saw them there. Hats over their eyes or else blinking up at +the blue sky. Then on the curb facing the Hall of Justice, philosophers +up from the water front or fresh from box cars, everyone with a story +that Stevenson would have got from them. + +"Above all on the same grim conditions to keep friends with himself." On +the bench an enormous woman with a hat that looks like a schooner atop +of a great pompadour wave and on the very same bench a mummied old +Chinese as thin as a wafer. An aeroplane hums above and Stevenson's +little boat looks envious. Where did Captain Montgomery of the sloop +Portsmouth stand when he planted the flag in 1848? The Mission bell, so +many miles to Dolores, so many miles to Rafael. Ring, Mission bell, ring +and show us where the El Camino Real will lead us all by and by. We who +pass all day, show us the way, Mission bell. - "here is a task for all +that a man has of fortitude and delicacy." + + + +Miracles + + + +"Why, who makes much of a miracle? +As for me, I know of nothing else but miracles. +Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan, +Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky, +Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water, +Or stand under trees in the woods, +Or sit at table at dinner with the rest, +Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car." + +- Walt Whitman. + +If man or woman be at all sensitive to life, he must react to the +commonplace much as Whitman did. Such a person may be hurrying along +about his business with perhaps no time for reflection and yet in a +flash, the miracle of life will come. to him through the slightest +happening. + +A little girl on the ferry sitting with her mother takes from her small +prim bag a set of doll clothes, and fondles them and smoothes them much +like a pullet with her first chickens. The sight of those square, +little, gingham dresses, trimmed with scraps of lace and silk and with +awkward sleeves standing straight out, brought to me, on that Oakland +ferry, all my childhood again, and I was cuddled close between the +surface roots of a great elm and from the nearby lane came the sight and +scent of Bouncing Bet, Joe Pye Weed, Tansy, Yarrow, Golden Rod, Boneset, +and over in the meadow the sight of cows and the smell of peppermint and +water cress, beside a little stream. + +The moment I write it down in physical words it becomes somehow less +miraculous. The mind is so infinite and the human being so essentially +mental, that the spoken or written word may never express them. + +The sight of electric lights flashing at night, the view of the city +from a cable car, the wonder of great trucks bearing down upon us like +fiery-eyed dragons, a bunch of poppies growing close to the roots of a +billboard in the heart of the city, and the silhouette of a young girl, +wind-blown, so that her straight slender figure shows more beautiful +than the statue that tops Union Square. Up Kearny street the glimpse of +eucalyptus trees on the top of Telegraph Hill standing out against the +pink sunset sky, the postman with his pack of human messages on his +back, the spirit of Robert Louis Stevenson in Portsmouth Square, and a +row of old, old men sitting in the sun on Union Square discussing the +Universe. + +Did you ever stand listening to the seals just at nightfall, and did +their weird, low call stir you to a feeling of kinship with all the +creatures of the great deep, and did you lose yourself there out under +the cold, dark water in that mysterious untamed world of the sea that is +older than the land? + +I don't know what it's all about. I only know we need more poets. Still +every man who reacts to life and feels it to be a miracle, he is himself +a poet. Even Whitman could only articulate in terms of wonder. + + + +Impulses and Prohibitions + + + +One day last week a man - a regular man, neither a decided proletarian +nor a typical bourgeois - but just a man was walking along. He was +dressed in average clothes, he was shaved and carried a suit case and +didn't look out of work and was evidently going somewhere. + +He was walking along with this suit case - it was on Larkin near +McAllister about two o'clock on one of those superb days of last week - +and he came to a place where there was a stretch of grass near the +sidewalk. I think he was hot and the suit case was getting heavy. . . . + +At any rate when he saw that grass, tall, dark green and fragrant, he +immediately lay down on it, pulled his hat over his eyes and, I expect, +went to sleep. It sounds so free and easy written down. Which makes it +no less significant. + +First, it was significantly Western. An Easterner or a Middle Westerner +would have thought it over first. Then the fact that the man was so +average made it significant. If he had looked like a vagabond it would +have been not even an incident. It is we who are respectable who are +fettered by Grundy. It was a logical thing to do and natural and +terribly human, but most of us can't do the logical thing and natural +even if inside we do feel terribly human. Especially these spring days. +Today at noon I would like to have gone up on the grass in Union Square +and taken my shoes off. Why didn't I? Not because of the police - but +Grundy. + +Now a Piute Indian woman could have done it. Her stockings too. A Piute +Indian woman when she's tired she sits down right in the street, right +where she's tired. But you and I, when we are weary we may sigh - "Wish +I could sit down." But we can't, not until we've gone down the street +and up in the elevator to some particular place where Grundy says we may +sit. + +The most significant thing about that man on the grass was that he was +in the heart of a great city. Cities are like homes. Some you're +comfortable in - some you're not. Now, San Francisco, it is a real city, +with all the metropolitan lares and penates, dignified and vividly +active. And yet there is no city in the country whose children may be as +"at home" as here. It is the only city I know of that has forgotten to +provide itself with nasty little "Keep Off The Grass" signs. It will +probably never be an altogether prohibition town. + + + +Stopping at the Fairmont + + + +It is best to say at the very beginning that if one is tremendously +wealthy he will not enjoy this dissertation on staying at high class +hotels. If one has more than two bathrooms in his home and can afford +chicken when it is not Sunday and turkey when it is not Christmas and +could stay at the Fairmont all winter if he preferred, then these words +will mean nothing to him. + +She has gone, this friend of mine. All winter she has been staying at +the Fairmont. Much of the time I, too, have been staying at the Fairmont +as her guest. So it is with a sense of double bereavement that I write. + +Talk to me no more of the comfort of cozy little homes. Give me a hotel +where I am treated as though I were a Somebody. Where I have but to +press a button and a liveried servant comes running as though I were +Mary, Queen of England, or Clara Kimball Young. And plenty of hot water +for baths and lots of enormous towels and, as soon as one's butter is +gone, another piece, and fresh butter at that. Pitchers of ice water and +a strapping big man standing so solicitously and watching one's every +mouthful. It makes me feel as though I were the Shah of Persia. At home +I don't feel at all like the Shah of Persia. + +I came across something the other day that Boswell quotes Dr. Johnson as +saying on this same subject: "There is no private house in which people +may enjoy themselves as at a capital tavern. At a tavern you are sure +you are welcome, and the more noise you make, the more trouble you give, +the more good things you call for, the welcomer you are." + +This friend of mine can go to the room telephone and say, so +incidentally, "Room service, please," and order a meal in her room with +almost negligence. That, I say, is elegance. Taxis, too, are another +test. I never order a taxi without a feeling of sea-sickness. Even when +someone else is paying the bill I can't sit back in comfort. Always they +are ticking off the minutes as though they were my last on this earth. + +They are simple tests that divide the plebeian from the patrician. Was +it Kipling who wrote: + +"If you can order breakfast in your room and not feel reckless, +If you can ride in taxis with aplomb, +If you can read the menu and not the prices, +Then, you're a qualified patrician, son." + +After my friend had gone I went back to the hotel and someone else was +in her room and no one treated me as though I were the Queen of Sheba +and I went out into a cold, indifferent world where no one cares when my +glass is empty, where no chair is pushed under me at table and where, +alas, I must sugar my own tea or go without. + + + +San Francisco Sings + + + +Some Cities roar and others hum, but San Francisco sings. Especially on +Saturday at noon and downtown. Saturday noon in San Francisco is like +nothing else anywhere but Saturday noon in San Francisco. And Saturday +noon is like the noon of no other day but Saturday. On Sunday they're +off. On Saturday noon everybody's on the street. + +There are more flowers on Saturday noon. On the street stands great +plumes of gold acacia, riots of daffodils, banks of violets, white, waxy +camellias and branches of Japanese peach blossoms. It's still winter by +the calendar but it's spring in San Francisco. Everywhere you turn a man +or boy from the country with baskets of the spring flowers. All you want +to carry for two bits and a nice bunch for a dime. Big, fat men and +oldish men with young twinkles in their eyes sell them, unromantic, but +very nice to deal with. + +There are the flowers and there are the women. No women in the country +so beautiful. No women in the world wear color as they do. Their colors +are never primitive, never gaudy, but gorgeous and vivid and alive, +seldom do you see a woman dressed in black, and black hats almost never. +Sit in the gallery of any church on Sunday morning when the sun comes +pouring in and it is as though you were looking down on flowers. + +Never two alike in the Saturday noon crowd and yet the same type. Free +women, happy women, regular women. Women who can recall a judge or so +and still be graceful and dainty. It is very significant that a San +Francisco woman stands at the very pinnacle of the city, graceful and +alert on that tall slender column in Union Square. + +And the Saturday noon men - men? - men? In describing color what can one +say of men? Well, it's not their fault that they can't wear pretty +clothes. They make a nice grey background for the women and a very +desirable audience and that's the best I can do for them. + +The street musicians, they contribute a lot to the Saturday noon +atmosphere. And when we drop a penny into their cups, perhaps it is not +so much pity as pay for the joy their piping gives us. And the people +who call papers, of whom the blind are the dearest of all. There's a +blind man on Powell street who sounds exactly as though he were saying +Mass. + +Dearie me, I can't describe it. All its lilt and rhythm and color and +humanness as well. And ladies walking along with huge white balloons +from the White House as though they had been blowing bubbles from some +great clay pipes. And a plump, rosy Chinese woman so dainty in her +breeches with her shiny, black hair bound in a head dress of jade and +opal and turquoise. + +We need more poets. + + + +Van Ness Avenue + + + +Van Ness avenue is sole. Nowhere in the wide world does the proud and +culminating automobile own and dominate such a wide and sweeping display +boulevard. + +The automobile, what a magnificent animal it is, long, low, luxurious, +purring softly, full of a great reserve, ready to dart forward, not to +the cruel touch of a spur or bit, but to the magic touch of a button. It +is the culminating achievement of this period of the machine age. The +airplane, clumsy and awkward as yet, belongs for its consummation to the +men of tomorrow. The automobile is the zenith of today's accomplishment, +and that is why men speak of it as "super" this and "super" that. + +The machine age has its own cruelties and its own, ugliness, but it also +has its own art and its own beauty, of which the automobile and the +houses which men have built to accommodate it, are the consummate art. +Not all will agree with me here. The critics will damn me with disdain, +and the King of Van Ness, who ought to agree, but is too busy talking +cars, will only remark, if he listens at all: "Pretty good dope at +that." But argumentatively I proceed. + +Not that I can name them. I am only sure, really sure, of a Ford. But I +admire them with a great pride in my human kind. They sit so +majestically in their palaces on Van Ness, great limousines, powerful +roadsters, luxurious touring cars, waiting there on display and +containing in themselves all the skill, energy, artifice, and beauty of +line, color and trim that the machine age can produce. + +And the buildings on Van Ness strike a new and independent note in +architecture. All that the ages have contributed of arches, columns, +coloring and lighting are utilized and made into palaces of great +dignity and beauty. There is something about the arched and windowed +walls and the spacious, open look of the buildings that is entirely +distinctive and Van Ness. It is not Mission, Grecian or Colonial, but it +is all of them. It is as new and distinctive as the service stations +that have sprung out of the automobile needs. If we dared we would call +it entirely American. + +And the printing that high lights each building is an achievement in +modern art. Who but Americans would dream of using printing instead of +gargoyles or classic medallions as ornamentation. Some of it is very +beautiful and almost none is ugly. The use of the word "Paige," the +printing of "Buick," the "H" of Hupmobile, the Mercury "A" of Arnold are +to me very beautiful. + +Van Ness avenue. It is exactly like its name. A long wide sweep for the +regal motor car, the most wonderful and proudest automobile row in the +world. The ghosts of the old, aristocratic and residential +before-the-fire Van Ness have seen to it that even commercialized it +shall still be - Van Ness. + + + +The Blind Men and the Elephant + + + +You live in San Francisco and I live in San Francisco, and so does the +man who owns the peanut wagon on the corner, and none of us live in the +same San Francisco - funny. We're like the blind men who each gave a +different version of the elephant. + +To some, San Francisco is always eight o'clock in the morning or six +o'clock at night, swinging on the straps homeward, swallow their dinners +and to a show in the evening. Such people never have wandered through +Golden Gate Park of an afternoon or sunned themselves on the benches of +Union Square. They have never seen San Francisco by week-day sunlight. + +Then there are home women and leisure women to whom San Francisco is +always afternoon, down-town in the shopping district with ladies in +pretty clothes passing each other on the street or in and out of the +sweet-scented stores. + +To some, San Francisco is always night. A taxi-driver who used to be a +newsboy down on the old Barbary Coast. He has never seen anything but +the night life of the city. Not bad, but night provincial - a sort of +male version of Trilby. + +The neighborhood of Merchants Exchange on California Street is San +Francisco to hundreds of men. They ride out to the golf links and into +the country on Sunday. Occasionally they go to New York, but when they +return San Francisco is limited to the neighborhood where men inquire +anxiously - "Is she picking up any in the East?" + +No matter how wealthy, no matter how poor, to each of us San Francisco +is very much limited in the confines of what each of us is interested +in. It's funny when you stop to think about it. How the Master of +Marionettes must laugh at us when he sees us together. Perhaps some +night after the show, the traffic cop raises his imperial hand and +there, waiting to pass, the taxi driver of the night and a dear little +home woman with her husband, and Mr. Chamber-of-Commerce and close to +him a man who has never seen San Francisco by week day sunlight. There +they all wait looking out of their eyes on San Francisco and each seeing +it so differently. + +San Francisco is one thing to you and another thing to me and something +entirely different to the man on the peanut stand. + + + +You're Getting Queer + + + +Everyone ought to have - well, what is it that everyone ought to have? +No, not a machine, not necessarily a garden and not even a camera. +Everyone ought to have children. If not children of their own, then +borrowed ones or nieces or nephews or the neighbor's kids. Everyone +ought to have children. + +People who have no children anywhere in their environment to whom they +can talk intimately soon become queer and lop-sided. They may not always +realize it but others will find them awkward and stilted and covered +with cobwebs and dust. Such people will be found hard to get on with and +full of snippiness. It is half what ails folks, that so many of them +have no children in their lives and it affects them like malnutrition. +Let a baby enter a street car filled with moldy, musty grown-ups and +watch the starved looks and the foolish and pathetic boohs and pokes +they will dart in the direction of the child. + +It is often my privilege to tell stories to a group of babies, and one +day when they were crowded close around me one of them exclaimed - "Hey, +you spit right in my eye." Then it came to me what a lot of eyes I had +probably spit into all down the years, and how no one had ever told me +of it so frankly before. Children are so honest until we teach them to +say that they're sorry when they're not, and to listen to stories that +bore them and to pretend not to like Jazz when all the time they do. + +Contact with children takes us back to the genesis of our being and +revives in us something primitive and honest and natural. I saw a man +recently being led out of a grown-up meeting by the hand of a child and +he looked so cross about it and was so obviously trying to maintain his +dignity while the child hurried him up the aisle. I thought how silly. +When a child has to leave a meeting he has to, that's all, and there's +no use in arguing or getting cross about it. And really how good it was +for that pompous individual to get taken down a peg by the terribly +human appeal of a little child. + +All of us ought to find some children to tell stories to for our own +sakes. And then when we have gotten Jack up the beanstalk and into the +ogre's kitchen, and the ogre says in an awful voice - "I smell a human +being," perhaps there will come to us some of the old thrill that we had +forgotten. + +If you don't know any children intimately, children who call you +"George" or "Auntie Flo," children who run to meet you, children who +hurt your pockets with anticipation, children to whom you read the +funnies or whom you take to the movies, children for whom you may revive +your childhood tricks of making a blade of grass squawk, or wiggling +your scalp, or cutting out a row of dancing paper dolls, then hurry and +get acquainted even if you are driven to pick them up. If you don't, +then as sure as you're alive, you'll find yourself growing queer. + + + +The Ferry and Real Boats + + + +As a matter of fact the ferry isn't a boat at all. It is more like a +house or a street car or a park full of pretty benches. It doesn't sail, +it only plies, plies between two given points at stated intervals, and +could anything be more dull. Nothing is more prosaic than a ferry unless +it be an ironing board. + +Even a barge is superior, and a barge doesn't pretend to be a boat. A +barge goes somewhere and it gets mussed up by the real salt sea, and so +do flat, old scows, honest and rough and sea-going. Any boat in the bay +is superior to the effeminate ferry. Even the boat to Sacramento has a +bit more atmosphere. As for tug boats, they are little, but O-my as they +pull the great, impotent barges after them. Pilot boats have quite an +air making the big, dignified steamers look foolish being yanked here +and there. The tidy fisherman's motor boats look rather unimaginative, +all tied in rows at Fisherman's Wharf, but they go somewhere, sometimes +away down the coast and from their sides the long nets reach away down +into the sea itself. + +How the real boats in the bay must despise the ferry. Think of being +called a boat and never once sailing out of the Golden Gate. How +maddening it must be. If the ferry had any spirit at all, some day it +would just switch about and go chunking out to sea. Imagine then the +concern of the staid commuters from Oakland and Alameda to say nothing +of the citizens of Berkeley and Marin County, to find themselves being +borne away from their vegetable gardens and fresh eggs out to sea in a +wooden boat. + +I suppose there are many people living right here in San Francisco who +have never sailed away out of the Golden Gate, people who have been +bound economically or by love or duty, and have had to ply like the +ferry daily between two given points. But can there be a man who has +seen tall-masted schooners and long-bodied ocean-going steamers pass in +and out of the alluring Golden Gate, and has never longed to sail away +to the enchanted South Seas, or to Alaska. Such a man is not a man any +more than the ferry is a boat. + +If I could choose the boat I'd sail away upon, it would not be a +coast-wise steamer, nor the prim Alaska packers nor even the steamers to +the Orient. I'd choose me a four-masted schooner, carrying freight and +going somewhere, anywhere, no one knows where. And then some day the +wind would die or some night the wind would howl and there would come to +me a great longing for or a ferry that should take me home at night in a +safe and prosaic manner. + + + +A Whiff of Acacia + + + +In Connecticut now, and in Illinois and in Utah too, it is lilac time. +Lilac time - I'll stop, if you please, to say the words over lovingly. +In San Francisco now the lilacs are in bloom but it is not lilac time. +In Golden Gate Park the rhododendrons are blossomed into gorgeous mounds +of color but they are not an event in San Francisco, only an incident. +In "The Trail of the Lonesome Pine" set in the mountains of Virginia, +they are the dominant background. + +Poppies and lupine and many others are the flower tradition of +California but they are not what I mean here. It is an impression of +mine that San Francisco more than any other city has taken the +traditional plants and flowers of other sections and made them into a +composite that makes up the plant atmosphere of this city. + +Take roses and geraniums and callas, none of which are epochal because +they are always at hand. But with old Mrs. Deacon Rogers in Connecticut +who nursed her calla through the long winter that she might take it to +church on Easter Sunday, the calla was history. + +Even the camellia San Franciscans take very philosophically. It has not, +for instance, the supremacy that Dumas gives it in "Camille." In +Sacramento they feature it more and an Easterner who saw them picking it +in branches instead of single flowers, exclaimed: "Why, they think +they're oleanders." + +The plant and flower atmosphere of a community is very important. Some +child is now growing up in the city, who some day will be far away when +there will come to him a whiff, perhaps of acacia, and in an instant +there will come surging over him all the feel and urge and thrill and +wistfulness and dreams of his childhood, and he will be once more in the +atmosphere of San Francisco. It will not include winter and summer but +an all-round-the-year-ness, it will not mean a flower, but flowers, +cherry blossoms from Japan, acacia from Australia, and the best from +everywhere which all together will mean to him - San Francisco. + +The smell of the acacia, which he knew as the wattle, inspired Kipling +to write those words + +"Smells are surer than sounds or sights +To make your heart strings crack." + +Perhaps many others see with me this difference between San Francisco +and the rest of the country, as though nature here expresses herself in +bounty more than in resurrection. Oh, well, whether it be "lilac time" +or "all the time" to each locality there is its own beauty and, as for +me, I have yet to find, in all my travels, the "place that God forgot." + + + +It Takes All Sorts + + + +"Hey, hey," called the tall, nervous man with the fat, little wife, +waving his arms at the conductor for fear he would be carried past his +corner. + +"It takes all sorts of people to make a world," remarked the +sensible-looking woman beside me. + +It is not the first time that I have been impressed with the philosophy +of those words. Who said them first, I wonder. "It takes all sorts of +people to make a world." That is, if we only had one sort or even a +number of sorts we would have no world. To make a world there must be +all sorts, including the funniest folks we ever knew. + +I looked from the sensible woman with her well-chosen clothes to the +woman across the way. This second woman was a sort of +dressed-up-and-no-place-to-go type, with a squirt of Cashmere Bouquet in +the center of her handkerchief. And nothing on that went with anything +else she had on. And a hat which one knew was a hat, because it was on +her head, otherwise it might have passed for almost anything. + +The woman beside me wouldn't have been caught dead looking like the +second woman. Yet she should have been thankful for her. For it is only +by contrast that the well-groomed look smart, and the overdressed look +fussy. Whether that is Einstein's theory of relativity or not, I don't +know. I only know that, "It takes all sorts of people to make a world." + +There we sit on parade in these side-seater cars, and what we are is +revealed so pitilessly to all who sit across from us. It is as though +Fate were making jokes of us and sits us down beside the antitheses of +ourselves. Such a one of Nature's jokes I saw recently. They were two +men. The first was the sort whom one calls an "old boy." A racy +individual, well-fed with a round front, an Elk, of course, a city man, +reeking of good cigars, and an appraising eye out for a good-looking +woman. + +Beside him sat a man who had been studying birds in the Park. Berkeley +was written all over him. A thin, pure type. He was dressed in field +glasses and a bag full of green weeds and stout walking boots. There was +an ecstatic glint in his eye which meant that he had discovered a +long-billed, yellow-tailed Peruvian fly-catcher, "very rare in these +parts." + +So there they sat packed in so close and so terribly far apart, both so +necessary to the making of a world. + +And as they sat a boy entered the car with a shoe-box, full of holes, +and out of the holes came a "peep" and then another. And the Berkeley +man lost his abstracted look and the man-about-town laid down his paper +and pretty soon the boy lifted the lid a bit and both men peeked in. + + + +The Fog in San Francisco + + + +Sunsets in the desert, spring in New England, black-green oaks lying on +tawny hills in Marin County, fields of cotton on red soil in Georgia, +surf on the rocks of Maine, moonlight on Mobile Bay, and the way the fog +comes upon San Francisco on summer afternoons. + +Sometimes when all its hills lie sparkling in the sunshine and children +play on the sidewalks, young fellows whistle, business autos go +zippity-ip around the corners, and the whole city is out of doors or +hanging out of the windows, then suddenly in great billows the fog comes +rolling in through the Golden Gate, and between the hills right up the +streets into the city. + +Then immediately all is changed and everything is nearer and more +intimate and nothing of the city is left but the street you're on. Then +you hurry home for supper and home seems good and sometimes you even +light a little fire in the grate. + +Still it is not a cold fog, it is not a wet fog, it is never an unkind +fog. It comes swiftly, but very gently, and lays its cool, dainty hand +on your face lovingly. Hands are so different, sticky or wet or clammy +or hot, but the hand of the San Francisco fog is the hand of a kind +nurse on a tired head. The rain is a beautiful thing too, but the fog +has another significance. - It is the "small rain" that Moses spoke of - +"My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew, +as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the +grass." + +It is very beautiful too. My, but I've seen fogs that were ugly, and +heard the fisherman say "She's pretty thick tonight." San Francisco fog +is not like that, but like great billows of a bride's veil. Then in the +morning when the sun comes it chases the bride and her veil out so fast, +and they go out to sea together, sunshine and fog. + +The other morning I awakened very early and there in the square of my +window was a hard, black cube against a white background. I lay there +and blinked and wondered where that telephone pole had come from, which +like Jack's beanstalk, had grown there overnight. Then I saw that the +fog had shut out the whole world and brought that pole close, and made +it seem big and formidable and ugly. + +The fog makes some people lose their perspective, and for others it only +wraps with a great kindness the whole world and blots out all ugliness. +But upon everyone, upon the just and unjust, this San Francisco fog lays +its gentle hand lovingly and with an ineffable kindness. + + + +A Block on Ashbury Heights + + + +Sometimes in the afternoons when the mothers are out shopping and the +youngsters have not yet returned from school our block looks so deserted +and wind-swept and dull. The houses are so much alike. They all sit +there in a row with their poker faces like close-mouthed Yankees +refusing to divulge any secrets. But from the bow-windows where I sit +and type, in spite of their silence the house fronts have become +individualized into so many human stories. + +I never stop to look out but somehow the stories get in through the +window. For instance, I would not be so rude as to stare at the family +washing which once a week is hung on the flat top of a neighbor's +garage, but those clothes up there have a way of flapping in the wind so +conspicuously that I cannot help see. There is the man of the house and +his, shall I say garments, kick themselves about like some staid old +deacon having his fling. Then there is the middle-sized bear whose +bloomers, billowed by the wind, become a ridiculous fat woman cut off at +the waist. And the little bear's starched clothes crack and snap while +the revolving tree-horse whirls about like some mad dervish. I often +wonder if the family know of the wild actions that take place on the +roof. + +It is a very respectable block inhabited mostly by grown-ups except one +lively house where a dog lives with some boys and their incidental +parents. The door of that house continuously bangs, and other boys with +other dogs are always hanging around whistling under the windows. + +Most of the windows are only used to admit light except one that is used +to look out of and is inhabited by an old lady who sits all day and +knits for her grandchildren. It must not be so bad, I think, to look +out of the window upon life instead of always rushing off to catch a car +that takes one into the thick of it. + +Out of the window of my kitchenette I can look into the window of a girl +in the next house. Every morning I get my breakfast by her dressing. My +coffee I start as she begins to unwind her curls from their steel cages. +I have a suspicion that she also dresses by me. If she sniffs my coffee +first, I imagine she hurries with her curls. She is usually fixing her +eye-brows to my toast and by the time I sit down she is doing her lips. + +After that she goes off for the long day and so do most of the people in +the block. Then at night they all return, drawn by some tie of love or +habit or despair, each to his right place in the long row of houses, +which have been sitting there all day with their poker faces, waiting. + + + +The Greek Grocer + + + +He had just opened a store on our street and in a Lady Bountiful spirit +of helping him out, I went in to do a little trading. I told him I would +like a can of baked beans. Baked beans, but he didn't seem to +understand. So pointing over the counter where they were in plain sight, +I said with all my teeth and tongue: "Baaked Beens." He followed my +finger. "Oh," he said correcting me, "You min Purrk ind Bins." + +That was the beginning and for weeks that Greek has been correcting my +pronunciation. There is no use to argue about it. The fellow has no +reverence for Noah Webster and besides there are more Greeks, nowadays, +than Yankees, and their way is probably getting to be the right way. +Sometimes I think it is we who are the "foreigners." + +Once it was cauliflower. Now, I say cauliflower exactly as it is spelled +but that isn't right. It is "Culliefleur," said staccato. And honey - +one day I wanted honey and after I had sung "Hunnie, hunnie" in high C, +and he didn't understand, I went around and picked out a jar of it. +"Oh," he said reproachfully, "you min hawney." + +A Scotch woman had a scene with him the other day over some "paeper." +There is no way of spelling it as she said it. She kept repeating it and +he kept getting the wrong thing. No, she didn't want paper but "paeper" +- seasoning for the table - salt and "paeper." The more excited she got, +the more Scotch she got and the more confused he. Then, when they were +both fairly hysterical, I discovered that it was pepper. + +Then you should have heard that Greek scold. He told her that it was +"Pip-RR." + +And she said back, "Paeper." + +Then they argued and never once did either one of them get it "Pepper." + +"Paeper." + +"Pip-RR." + +"Paeper." + +"Pip-RR." + +One day I heard him laying down the law to a woman who had dared +question his price of "Rust Bif." He told her what he had to pay for it +in "Cash Mawney" and asked her if she could do so, to explain. "Explin - +you kin explin - explin." But she couldn't explain. So, chastened, she +meekly bought the roast beef at his price. + +Yesterday a U. C. girl was in and asked, "You are a Greek, are you not?" + +"Naw," he answered, "you min Grrik." + + + +Billboards or Art + + + +If you like billboards you are not artistic. Take it or leave it. That's +the criterion. It's not my verdict. Ask those who know, the literary +clubs, the art clubs and our distinguished guests from Europe. I can +remember away back when Pierre Loti visited this country and was so +shocked at the glaring billboards that marred the beauty of New York +harbor and blinded his continental eyes with their gaudy colors. + +Now, I would like to be both artistic and fond of billboards. I can't be +both. So I choose - billboards. Everyone who reads these words must make +his choice. + +I not only enjoy them; I think they are beautiful. A lovely splash of +color in the grayness of the city, a sincere expression of American +life, so sincere that the critics who take their opinions from Europe +never have been able to sneer us out of them. + +We must admit, those of us who admire billboards, that the critics had +their justification in the early days. We have not forgotten the days +when mortgaged farmers prostituted their barns by selling advertising +rights to Hood's Sarsaparilla and Carter's Little Liver Pills and to +Lydia Pinkham, and when Bull Durham marred every green meadow from +Boston to Washington. Billboards were an unsavory addition to the +landscape then. But the modern art of bill posting is quite a different +thing and in California it has reached its highest development. +Segregated spots of color in the dun cities, surrounded by well +manicured lawns, supported by classic figures in white and lighted by +dainty top lights. And out along the boulevards, how lovely they are at +night, luminous breaks along the dark highways, suggesting so tactfully +the kind of tire to use or the sort of mattress to lie upon. + +The critic has had his mission. He has forced the Poster man. +Fortunately though young America has not taken him seriously. If he had +this country would have missed some of its most distinctive +contributions to Art. The electric sign for instance. That was condemned +as vigorously as the billboard. And today, tell me, anybody, anywhere +what is more beautiful in all the world than the dancing lights of +Market Street at night. In what a unique and vital way they express the +life of the great modern city. + +And anything that expresses Life, whether that life be mediaeval or the +life of the machine age, that is Art. There. + +How pleased everyone is to know that the pretty Palmolive girl who "kept +her girl complexion" is married and has a sweet little daughter who has +inherited her mother's skin. + +I don't always take the posters seriously. Now, I don't believe that +that man "would walk a mile for a Camel." He'd borrow one first. And +"contented cows." Cows are always contented. All I've known. But they +may have had bolshevikish notions recently, cud strikes, perhaps. Hence +the accent on "contented cows," to reassure us that there is no "Red" +propaganda in the milk. Then, there is the parrot; what a long time it +takes to teach him to say "Gear-ardelly." And that sentimental touch, +"If pipes could talk." They do. + +Sometimes, in an absent-minded way, I get them confused, movies and +merchandise, and find myself wondering who's starring in "Nucoa." Then +there's that ecclesiastical looking party, the patron of Bromo-Quinine, +whom I always take for some bearded movie star. + +But to return to their artistic merits, they are artistic. Take those +same "contented cows." What could be more futurist than the coal black +sky under which they so contentedly graze? Or the henna hills so far +away, or the purple grass they chew. Matisse and Picasso, great +modernists, could not out-do those cows. + +The cigarette men are particularly interesting. A bit over done. One +cannot help wonder what enthusiasm they would have left for a gorgeous +sunset having spent so much on, a cigarette. But I expect they are good +men at heart and not so sensuous as they appear. There's that jolly old +boy who hasn't had such a good smoke in sixty years. One wonders if his +teeth are his own. They all have teeth. Everyone has teeth these days. +It would be a change to see someone on a billboard with his mouth shut. + + + +Golden Gate Park + + + +Enter slowly, by foot is much the better way, and join the long, +loitering procession. + +Black-green foliage, the curious old-green of trees that never wither +and never resurrect. Something very foreign or is it San Francisco? +Cubist effects of the horizontally-lined cypress, vertical lines of the +eucalyptus, and the soft, down-dropping of the willow trees and pepper. + +Women on the benches tatting, reading, resting. A retired Kansan widower +passes, glances sidewise. Well, no harm in looking at a comely woman. +Gossip of mothers over baby carriages, "Only nine months old! Mine is a +year. Well, we think he's pretty fine." + +Comes the sight-seeing bus. Blare of the megaphone. "Seventeen miles of +driveway, boost, boast, greatest in the world." + +All day long the swings are swinging, rhythmic, slow to the touch of +loving hands. Then at night when all is still and dark, they go on +swinging dream children, rhythmic, slow. + +Down the slide into the soft sand. Grandpa tending Nellie's children: +"Careful there." Ding, ding like the sound of a temple bell the +whirling, dizzy iron rings clang against their iron pole. Tramp of the +patient little burros. "Mother, I want another cone." + +Bum-ti-bum, too-too-too, ta-ta-ta, ta-ta-tahh, the band. Wagner by +request. Music lovers in the crowd. A symphony orchestra is very fine, +but simple people like ourselves, we also love a band. + +I've never been to Japan, but this must be the way it looks. Tinkle of +the wind bells, petals of Cherry floating down. Sorry, but I've used the +last of the films. Well, we'll come again. + +The bears, the big brown grizzlies, leave them now. Out, what is this! +Fairyland of flowers and fragrance. Bears and orchids, wise planned +contrast. + +People with accumulative minds wander through the museum, very +interesting, "Just look at this mosaic, John." Exhibit of modern art in +the gallery. "Portrait of a girl," only a daub to the wayfaring man, + +Lovers in secluded places stealing a kiss, caught by the middle-aged. +"Silly young things," wistfully. + +Once all parks were private grounds. Free now to the poorest serf. Well, +there's something century-gained. Some people say the world's growing +worse all the time. Perhaps, perhaps. . . . + +Who cares. Lying flat on your back close to the smell of the earth, the +great kind mother. Up, up at the sky, how deep, how blue. Is there a +God? There must be Something; look at each perfect blade of grass. An +airplane across the blue. There's something gained. + +Automobiles in stately procession proud as horses ever were. Automobiles +proudly rolling, swings swinging, people passing, and the swimming of +all the water fowls, the swans, the Japanese ducks and the little mud +hens. Infinitude of movement, infinitude of life, ineffable beauty. +There must be a God. There must be Something back of it all. + + + +Extra Fresh + + + +Some one in San Francisco keeps hens. Not only hens, but a rooster. I +distinctly heard him crow. It was in the very early morning, and like +Tennyson's "Queen of the May" - lying broad awake - "I did not hear the +dog howl, mother, but I did hear this crow." + +It is Ralph Waldo Trine, I think, who says that "So long as there +remaineth in it the crow of a cock or the lay of a hen a city is not a +city." But I would not base the citifiedness of a city upon the mere +crow of a cock any more than on the census. It is a vulgar criterion. + +For human nature is human nature and nothing betrays human nature like +hens. It is not surprising, therefore, that some woman has sneaked into +the city limits a mess of hens. Neither is it an aspersion on the +police. + +Besides this was to be about eggs. + +Has anyone noticed how eggs of late years are never just eggs, but +classified? The hens seem to lay them classified. There are hen eggs and +pullet eggs and large hen eggs and small hen eggs and large pullet eggs +and small pullet eggs and strictly fresh eggs and ranch eggs and choice +eggs and large dark eggs and all-mixed eggs and fresh cracked eggs and +mixed color eggs and small brown and, oh, hundreds of sub-divisions. + +The very latest I noticed were "dirty" eggs, 2 cents cheaper. I look +next for "small dirty eggs." Why should they sound so unrefined? More so +some way than "small dirty boys." But an artist must paint life as he +sees it and I saw these "dirty" eggs on that bazaar - and bizarre - of +diversities - Fillmore street. + +On Haight street I saw "extra fresh eggs" and how an egg can be more +than "fresh" I fail to see. Now, a man may be "extra fresh," but an egg +is different. Even if it left the hen early it would still be only +"fresh." Well, the grocer probably knows. + +Every adjective he uses has its significance. Take "ranch" eggs, how +pastoral they sound and fanned by fresh zephyrs. The same with "yard" +eggs, such an "out in the open - let the rest of the world go by" +impression they confer. And so reassuring, too, as though they couldn't +have been manufactured for Woolworth's. + +There is much, I find, to be written about eggs. + +Isn't it "up-looking," as Mr. Wilson would say, that they are so cheap +now? + +I cannot help wondering if that woman's hens - the hens that went with +the crow - if they laid well when eggs were so high. + + + +On the California-Street Car + + + +She was a little black girl about four years old, riding with her mother +on the observation seat of the California street car. She was a little +black girl and didn't know the difference - she might have been as white +as milk for all she knew. She was poor but daintily dressed beside being +very neat. + +The rest of us in the car were grown-up and white - well-dressed people +who looked as though we knew a lot. We were all riding along; we and the +little black girl with her mother, when suddenly we came out from the +surrounding wall of apartment houses into the open, facing a side +street - . + +And there before us, in all its morning glory, lay the great city of +Saint Francis. It was just emerging out of fog. The smoke and steam +rising, touched into color by the sun, softened it into a great mystery +with forms and hulks coming into relief through the mists. For a moment +it wasn't a city but a magnificent singing of the morning. + +In a dull, inert way I suppose all of us, the grownup people, glimpsed +some of its beauty. But we were all intent upon the business of the +day - we didn't look out very far - . + +But the little black girl who didn't know any better, the little black +girl raised her two arms above her head and exclaimed in a high, joyous +child voice - "GEE WHIZ!" + + + +Western Yarns + + + +The men around the corner store at home were forever telling stories +about the big yarns that Were told in the West. One of the favorites +was that ancient one of the Western town that was so healthy they had to +kill a man to start a graveyard. + +Having been brought up on this tradition of Western yarns, I have been +surprised since living here never to have heard a single story that +didn't sound perfectly reasonable. But it has dawned on me recently that +the "Yarns" are true. Therefore, they are no longer yarns, but facts. + +Here is an oil boom story I heard first-hand the other day. I believe +it, but you couldn't get those men around the corner store to believe it - . + +It was in a dusty town where everyone rushed in to make quick money and +never mind about the main street even if they did have to plough through +dust to their knees. Then one day a heavy rain came that made the street +one slough of soft oozy clay which no one could cross. + +Then enters the hero. Even while they stood dismayed, gazing at each +other across the clay, he appeared with a mud sled and took them all +across for 50 cents a passenger and $1 if you had a bundle. + +Now, I believe it. Didn't I see the man who had been there and paid his +four-bits to cross? Imagine, if you can, though, trying to make those +Yankees around the corner store believe that there was a town where one +had to pay 50 cents to cross a narrow country road in a mud sled. + +I believed a man who told me a story down in Kern County last summer. We +were riding over the desert and I asked the stage driver the name of a +low yellow bush that grows down there. He was an interesting fellow, +that stage driver, who had been a buccaroo all his life and apparently +knew all about the sage brush country. And when he didn't know he was +not lacking in an answer. I like a man like that. Answer, I say, whether +you know or not. + +He said with great assurance that the little, low, yellow bush was +"Mexican saddle blanket" or "Tinder bush," this last because it burns +like tinder in the fall of the year. + +"Why, that bush is so dry," he said, "that once when I lighted it to +cook my bacon for breakfast it traveled so fast that by the time my +bacon was cooked I was five miles from camp." + +I laughed - I couldn't help it when I imagined that six-footer traveling +across the desert with a frying pan over that low bush. I laughed +because it was so real to me, but he misunderstood, and said so sort of +hurt, "Don't you believe me?" + +And I told him I did. And I did. And I do. Five miles isn't a great +distance to travel over the desert after one's bacon. + + + +Mr. Mazzini and Dante + + + +Mr. Mazzini will never be rich. He takes too much time for philosophy +and gossiping with the women, and he loves a joke too well, and his +heart is too kind. He is a universal type, as old as the world is old, +Theocritus knew him well. + +"You pick me out some good cantaloupes," I said with deadly tact, and +Mr. Mazzini answered that it couldn't be done and that melons were like +men, that there was no sure way of picking them out for their kindness +of heart. Then he took time over the melons to tell me how his mother in +Italy, who was evidently something of a match-maker, had gotten fooled +on a young man who was both "laze" and "steenge" in his youth but who +made a very good husband. + +One day it was figs, and I was strong for the nice appearing ones, but +Mr. Mazzini told me a lot about figs and chose me some that were +lop-sided from packing. What delicious figs they were, all stored with +sunshine and sweetness and flavor just as he had told me. Mr. Mazzini +owns his own store, and yet when he throws in a few extra, as he always +does, because they are soft or a little specked, he will wink and glance +slyly around just as though he were putting one over on the boss. + +One morning I saw him sweeping out his store and he wore a woman's +sweeping cap with the strings tied under his grisly old chin. When I saw +him I just stood and laughed aloud, and he asked me why not, and said +that a sweeping cap was just as good for a man as for a woman, and then +he stopped his sweeping and gave me quite a male feminist talk. And he +has a horse, Mr. Mazzini has, a fat old plug that peeks around his +blinders as humorously as his master. Oh, I could just keep on talking +about Mr. Mazzini for pages, but I started to speak of Dante. + +I like the Italians and I like the Latin quarter where they live. I like +it better than Ashbury Heights for instance. I like the way the Italians +use their windows to look out of and to lean out of, and I like the way +they have socialized the sidewalk. It's all a matter of taste, and I +wouldn't criticize the people of Ashbury Heights simply because they use +their well-curtained windows only to admit the light, and do not lean +out and gossip with their neighbors and yell to their children, "Mahree, +Mahree," nor sit out on their steps in the evening and play Rigoletto on +the accordion. It's all a matter of taste. + +Six hundred years ago Dante was an Italian, but he is much more than +that today. After six centuries Dante belongs to all those and only +those who can read him with appreciation and pleasure. Our scavenger is +an Italian, and he reads Dante just as so many of the Anglo Saxon +proletair read Shakespeare. So Dante belongs to this garbage man, not +because he is Italian, but because he sincerely loves the Divina +Commedia. A waiter, in Il Trovatore, a rarely honest man, acknowledged +to me that he could not read Dante, and that every time he tried he got +mad and threw the book away. + +Dante belongs to the literary elect of all nations, Dante belongs to the +great internationale of the immortals. Dante belongs to Eternity. And +for that matter so does Mr. Mazzini. + + + +On the Nob of Nob Hill + + + +On the very nob of Nob Hill there is the ruin of a mansion which was the +Whittell home. In ruins it still is a mansion. In ruins it is grander +than any place around because it belonged to the grand days. + +There is an enclosed garden in the rear after the fashion of old Spanish +gardens in Monterey. And between the boards that cover a door in the +high wall, one may peek and catch a glimpse of hollyhocks in a row and +roses running wild, trellises of green lattice and ghosts of beautiful +ladies having afternoon tea. + +To one side of the mansion there is a formal garden that hugs up close +to the ivy-covered walls of the house. It is such a garden as one sees +in elaborately illustrated copies of Mother Goose "with silver bells and +cockle shells." It's so beautiful that it doesn't seem real. California +gardens are like that, and to those of us from bleak countries they look +like pictures out of books. There is this well-groomed garden of the +living present hugging up close to the ruins of yesterday and then, if +you please, Mother Nature, with her penchant for whimsy, has grown right +up against these two a riot of purple and gold lupine, a product of her +own unaided husbandry. + +I am not much on allegory nor sermonizing, but I declare San Francisco +gets me started. And when walking along about one's business, one sees +such a vivid picture, the allegory forces itself. The grandeur of +yesterday, the serious beauty of today, and then the wild flowers that +covered the hills before man interfered and will live on after man has +gone into dust to make new flowers. + +Such a contemplation would make some people blue but it gives me a +feeling of something basic and secure and eternal in all this strange +puzzle of life. It was a beautiful day up there on the tip-toe of Nob +Hill. What a beautiful view they must have had from the mansion windows. +The same sky and the same banks of heavy soft white clouds. And Job, +that mysterious man of the Bible, must have looked up at just such a sky +when those stern questions came to him: + +"Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare if +thou hast understanding. + +"Dost thou know the balancings of the clouds, the wondrous works of Him +that is perfect in knowledge?" + +"Hast thou with Him spread out the sky, which is strong, and as a molten +looking glass?" + +The nob of Nob Hill, how close it is to the sky. + + + +The Leighton Press San Francisco, Cal +The Project Gutenberg Etext of Vignettes Of San Francisco +by Almira Bailey +******This file should be named vigsf10.txt or vigsf10.zip****** + +Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, vigsf11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, vigsf10a.txt + +This etext was produced by David Schwan <davidsch@earthlink.net>. + +*** + +More information about this book is at the top of this file. + + +We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance +of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing. +Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections, +even years after the official publication date. + +Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til +midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. +The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at +Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. 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