ity. The merchants
of San Francisco have shown great courage and daring in the erection of
their big buildings almost immediately on the stones and ashes of the
old ones. They have done all this on borrowed money and loaded
themselves with heavy mortgages, trusting to the future and to fat years
to pay off their indebtedness. They have done an heroic work in a
solid, impressive way, and deserve all the business that can possibly
come to them.

In San Francisco I saw for the first time that great California
institution, the cafeteria. They pronounce this word in California with
the accent on the "i." To a traveler it seems as if all San Francisco
must take its meals in these well equipped and perfectly ordered
restaurants. You enter at one side of the room, taking up napkin, tray,
knife, fork, and spoons from carefully arranged piles as you pass along
a narrow aisle outlined by a railing. Next comes a counter steaming with
trays of hot food, and a second counter follows with rows of salads and
fruits on ice. After one's choice is made, the tray is inspected and the
pay-check estimated and placed on the tray by a cashier. You are then
free to choose your table in the big room and to turn over your tray to
one of the few waiters in attendance. You leave on the opposite side of
the room, passing a second cashier and paying the amount of your check.

It is a great game, this of choosing one's food by looking it over as it
stands piping hot or ice cold, in its appointed place. The attendants
are evidently accustomed to the weakness of human nature, bewildered by
so overwhelming an array of viands. They keep calling out the merits of
various dishes as the slow procession passes. "Have some broiled ham?
It's very nice this morning." "Try the bacon. It's specially good
to-day."

California people are much given to light housekeeping and to taking
their meals in cafeterias and other restaurants. Doubtless this fashion
may have been inaugurated by the fact that an ever increasing tourist
population, living in hotels and lodgings, must be taken care of. But
many of the Californians themselves are accustomed to reduce the cares
of housekeeping to the minimum, and to take almost all their meals away
from their own homes. The servant question is a serious one in
California; and this type of co-operative housekeeping seems to commend
itself to hosts of people. We enjoyed it as pilgrims and travelers, but
one would scarcely wish to h