s as though she had just stepped off
the cover of the August number of a magazine. There is something, too,
about the salt-laden breezes of San Francisco that gives women wonderful
complexions; that detail, properly press-agented, ought to fetch the
entire female population of the United States.

[Illustration: THE WOMAN NEAREST THE WALL HAS ON HER FURS--IT IS ALWAYS
COOL IN THE SHADE]

For drawing the men, I would exploit the great cardinal fact that
nowhere in the country--not even in Norfolk or Baltimore or New
Orleans--can you get better things to eat than in San Francisco. For its
size, I believe there are more good clubs and more good restaurants
right there than in any other spot on the habitable globe. Particularly
in the preparation of the typical dishes of the Coast do the San
Francisco cooks excel; their cuisine is based on a sane American
foundation, with a delectable suggestion of the Spanish in it, and
sometimes with a traceable suggestion of the best there is in the
Italian and the Chinese schools of cookery.

To one whose taste in oysters has been developed by eating the
full-chested bi-valve of the Eastern seaboard and the deep-lunged,
long-bodied product of the Louisiana bayous, the native oyster does not
greatly appeal. A lot has been written and printed about the California
oyster, but in my opinion he will always have considerable difficulty in
living up to his press notices. It takes about a thousand of him to make
a quart and about a hundred of him to make a taste. Even then he doesn't
taste much like a real oyster, but more like an infinitesimal scrap of
sponge where a real oyster camped out overnight once.

There is a dream of a little fish, however, called a sand dab--he is a
tiny, flounder-shaped titbit hailing from deep water; and for eating
purposes he is probably the best fish that swims--better even than the
pompano of the Gulf--and when you say that you are saying about all
there is to be said for a fish. And the big crabs of the Pacific side
are the hereditary princes of the crab family. They look like
spread-eagles; and properly prepared they taste like Heaven. I often
wonder what the crabsters buy one-half so precious as the stuff they
sell--which is a quotation from Omar, with original interpolations by
me. The domestic cheese of the Sierras is not without its attractions
also, whether you eat it fresh or whether you keep it until its general
aspect and prevalent atmosphere are su