t her go!". And for myself, I choose
to believe that story. The queen of this carnival--her first name was
Manila, by the way--a pretty girl of course, was a picturesque detail in
the city life for a week. In velvet, ermine and brilliant crown, she was
always flashing from place to place in an automobile, surrounded by a
group, equally pretty, of ladies in waiting. When the deep, cylindrical
cistern-like reservoir on Twin Peaks was finished, they opened it with a
dance; when the Stockton street tunnel was finished, they opened it
with a dance; when the morgue was completed they opened that with a
reception.

The San Francisco papers reflect all this activity, and they certainly
make entertaining reading. For one thing, the annual crop of pretty
girls being ten times as large there as anywhere else, and photography
being universally a fine art, the papers are filled with pictures of
beautiful women. They are the only papers I have ever seen in which
the faces that appear on the theatrical page pale beside those that
accompany the news stories. The last three months of my stay in
San Francisco I cut out all the pictures of pretty girls from three
newspapers. They included all kinds of women--society, club, athletic,
college, highbrow, low-brow; highway-women, burglaresses, forgeresses
and murderesses. I have just counted those pictures three hundred
and fifty-four--and all beautiful. When I received my paper in the
morning--until the war made that function, even in California, a
melancholy one--I used to look first at the pictures of the women. Then
always I turned to the sporting page to see what record had been broken
since yesterday and, if it were Saturday morning (I confess it without
shame), to read the joyous account of Friday night's boxing contest.
And, always before I settled to the important news of the day, I read
the last "stunt".

Picturesque "stunts" are always being pulled off in San Francisco.
Was it the late lamented Beachey flying with a pretty girl around the
half-completed Tower of Jewels, was it a pretty actress selling roses
at the Lotta Fountain for the benefit of the Belgians, it was something
amusing, stirring and characteristic. Always the "stunt" involved a lot
of pretty girls and often it demanded the services of the mayor. I shall
regret to the end of my days that I did not keep a scrapbook devoted
to Mayor Rolph's activities. For being mayor of San Francisco is no
sinecure. But as most of