out against them and how he had been
besieged for years to rent his marine view and wouldn't.

As I turned away I met an Irish delivery man and he said that there were
dozens of vacant apartments very reasonable and waved his hand vaguely
in the direction where I'd been searching. I like the Irish but his
cheerful fibbery was the last straw and I went home.

The next day my friends called up and said that they had a marine view
for me. I was to live all summer in the apartment of the So-and-Sos
while they were away. So now I am. They are artistic and I drink my
coffee from saffron colored cups on a bay green table runner over a
black table under a turquoise blue ceiling with a view of the bay from
the window.

But I am humble and if some day I meet a hot, tired looking woman who
can't find an apartment on Russian Hill, I shall say: "Shucks, a marine
view isn't so much."

Hilly-Cum-Go

This is a story for children, because they will know it's only fooling,
while grown-up people will believe it's true.

The cable car isn't a car at all, children, but is a hilly-cum-go, a
species of rocking horse and a grown-up kiddie-kar. It is a native of
and peculiar to San Francisco, and is a loyal member of the N. S. G. W.
It has relatives in the South, and the electric dinkie that rolls up and
down between Venice and Santa Monica is its first cousin. Some say that
it is distantly related to the wheel chairs at Atlantic City. It is not
at all common.

The men who run it are its Uncles. The parents live underground caring
for the young kiddie-kars. At times, if you peek down in that hole near
the Fairmont and are careful not to be run over you may see them
bustling about. Before she was married, the mama was a Marjory Daw of
the Daw family, famous see-sawers. The children take after their mother.

The Uncles are very kind and pick the hilly-cum-goes up in their arms as
tenderly as a woman would. You must have seen them pick the little
things up and run with them across the streets out of the way of autos.
And at night they tuck them in their little beds and hear them say their
prayer which goes:

Oh, dear me, I hope I'm able,
All day long to keep my cable.

These hilly-cum-goes are not run by electricity at all, but just
pretend. They are run by three things--black magic, white magic and a
sense of humor. Black magic takes them up the hills, white magic
restrains them down, and the sense of humor is in the Iri