diaphanous rather than dense and
dowdy. The markets of San Francisco were much to blame for the
flashiness of the domestic interior: they were stocked with the gaudiest
fixtures and textures, and in the inspection of them the eye was
bewildered and the taste demoralized.

Harmony survived the inharmonious, and it prevailed in the homes of the
better classes, as it was bound to do; for refinement had set its seal
there, and you can not counterfeit the seal of refinement. But I am
inclined to think that in the Fifties there was a natural tendency to
overdress, to over-decorate, to overdo almost everything. Indeed the day
was demonstrative; if the now celebrated climate had not yet been
elaborately advertised, no doubt there was something hi it singularly
bracing. The elixir of it got into the blood and the brain, and perhaps
the bones as well. The old felt younger than they did when they left
"the States,"--the territory from the Rockies to the Atlantic Ocean was
commonly known as "the States." The middle-aged renewed their youth, and
youth was wild with an exuberance of health and hope and happiness that
seemed to give promise of immortality.

No wonder that it was thought an honor to be known as the first white
child born in San Francisco--I'd think it such myself,--and I'm proud to
state that all three claimants are my personal friends.

X.

HAPPY VALLEY

How well I remember it--the Happy Valley of the days of old! It lay
between California Street and Rincon Point; was bounded on the east by
the Harbor of San Francisco, and on the west by the mission peaks. I
never knew just why it was called _happy_; I never saw any wildly-happy
inhabitants singing or dancing for joy on its sometimes rather
indefinite street corners. If there is happiness in sand, then, happily,
it was sandy. You might have climbed knee-deep up some parts of it and
slid down on the other side; you could have played at "hide-and-seek"
among its shifting undulations. From what is now known as Nob Hill you
could have looked across it to the heights of Rincon Point--and,
perchance, have looked in vain for happiness. Yet who or what is
happiness? A flying nymph whose airy steps even the sand can not stay
for long.

Down through this Happy Valley ran Market Street, a bias cut across the
city that was to be. Market Street is about all that saved that city
from making a checker-board of its ground-plan. Market Street flew off
at a tangent and