efore, that some woman has sneaked into
the city limits a mess of hens. Neither is it an aspersion on the
police.

Besides this was to be about eggs.

Has anyone noticed how eggs of late years are never just eggs, but
classified? The hens seem to lay them classified. There are hen eggs and
pullet eggs and large hen eggs and small hen eggs and large pullet eggs
and small pullet eggs and strictly fresh eggs and ranch eggs and choice
eggs and large dark eggs and all-mixed eggs and fresh cracked eggs and
mixed color eggs and small brown and, oh, hundreds of sub-divisions.

The very latest I noticed were "dirty" eggs, 2 cents cheaper. I look
next for "small dirty eggs." Why should they sound so unrefined? More so
some way than "small dirty boys." But an artist must paint life as he
sees it and I saw these "dirty" eggs on that bazaar--and bizarre--of
diversities--Fillmore street.

On Haight street I saw "extra fresh eggs" and how an egg can be more
than "fresh" I fail to see. Now, a man may be "extra fresh," but an egg
is different. Even if it left the hen early it would still be only
"fresh." Well, the grocer probably knows.

Every adjective he uses has its significance. Take "ranch" eggs, how
pastoral they sound and fanned by fresh zephyrs. The same with "yard"
eggs, such an "out in the open--let the rest of the world go by"
impression they confer. And so reassuring, too, as though they couldn't
have been manufactured for Woolworth's.

There is much, I find, to be written about eggs.

Isn't it "up-looking," as Mr. Wilson would say, that they are so cheap
now?

I cannot help wondering if that woman's hens--the hens that went with
the crow--if they laid well when eggs were so high.

On the California-Street Car

She was a little black girl about four years old, riding with her mother
on the observation seat of the California street car. She was a little
black girl and didn't know the difference--she might have been as white
as milk for all she knew. She was poor but daintily dressed beside being
very neat.

The rest of us in the car were grown-up and white--well-dressed people
who looked as though we knew a lot. We were all riding along; we and the
little black girl with her mother, when suddenly we came out from the
surrounding wall of apartment houses into the open, facing a side
street--.

And there before us, in all its morning glory, lay the great city of
Saint Francis. It was just emerging out of