up this street toward Lone Mountain Cemetery, Casey and Cora, another
criminal, were hung in front of the Vigilance, Headquarters on
Sacramento near Front."

"You called it Fort Gunnybags ?" he queried.

"Yes, it was so named from the precautionary bulwark of sand-filled
sacks piled up in a hollow square in front to protect the entrance. A
bronze plate marked the old building before the fire."

We turned into Columbus Avenue. "Your beloved Stevenson used to live at
No. 8, there on the gore where the Italian Bank is," I said. "We are
coming to the Latin Quarter, a section that has always been given over
to foreigners, for in early days 'Sidneyville,' peopled by
ticket-of-leave men from the penal colony of Australia, and 'Little
Chile' of the Peruvians and Chileans, clustered close around the base of
Telegraph Hill."

"The very place Stevenson would choose, where life was flavored with
history and the mystery of the foreign. But where are you going?" he
exclaimed, stopping short as I began to ascend the steps by which Kearny
Street climbs the hill.

"I thought you wished to see the site of the Marine Signal Station." I
looked down at him from the fourth stair with feigned surprise.

"I do, indeed, but--can't we go up by a funicular and come down this
way?" he compromised. "My Boston calves protest."

"Oh well, we can go by the level a little farther, but I thought you
liked the 'flavor of the foreign.' Anyway, we ought to see Earl
Cummings' old man," I remembered.

"What is his fatherland and his business?" he asked as his eye traveled
over the shop signs "Sanguinetti, Farmacia Italiana," "Molinari &
Cariani, Grocers;" "Oliva & Brizzolara, Real Estate."

"His birthplace is the World Universal, and his profession-leading us
back to nature," I answered. Then, as we passed the spick and span
concrete facade of the Patronal Church of St. Francis, with its rear of
burned brick: "This is the direct descendent of the old Mission," I told
him, "the first Parish Church of San Francisco. It was gutted by the
fire and is being very gradually restored. A notice within administers
an implied rebuke: 'The First Erected--the Last Restored.'"

We paused at the iron fence of the small green triangle cut off from
Washington Square by the slant of Columbus Avenue, and peered at the
fine bronze figure of a sinewy old man stooping to drink from his hand
on the edge of the little pool.

"Mr. Cummings' message to his universal br