h the city, one is almost ashamed to compare a bijou like
it, with a huge creature like San Francisco, which suggests, somehow, a
kind of prehistoric being, of dragon-like shape and unimagined power.

This prehistoric suggestion which San Francisco gives, is further
carried out by the untempered breath of its climate. The trade winds
blow in fiercely in the afternoons, and the chill sea fog creeps over
everything with a ferocious persistency quite appalling. The promontory
on which the city stands is open to all gales, and one's clothing,
throughout the year, must be of such a kind, as always to be capable of
resisting borean blasts.

This strange, unfamiliar look of San Francisco, is further carried out
by the huge, reddish-yellow bars which mark its form. These are the
streets, which ride up and down in uncompromising straight lines and
parallels, right over every obstacle which they meet.

The barbaric forcefulness which laid out straight streets sheer over
little mountains, has developed in San Francisco the cable-car system,
which here reigns supreme, tugging everything along with it.

It is no easy matter for a tenderfoot from the East, to ride in such
cars on a first attempt, with either comfort or dignity. On one stretch
you are ascending at a fearful angle, then for a brief space you are on
the level, only to be whirled up or down, as the case may be, in a few
minutes more. When one is sitting sideways, as is usual in street cars,
it requires a certain diffused consciousness to preserve one's
equilibrium, which, those accustomed to the use of seats always on the
level, cannot readily attain. This self-adjustment once reached,
however, and the pivot of permanence properly adjusted, one can proudly
keep one's position like a native, and not flop over one's neighbors at
every change of angle, as one must do, to one's utter confusion, on a
first ride in a San Francisco cable-car on a steep incline.

There were many attractions for me in San Francisco, among friends whom
I had known in days long gone by, in Chicago, Milwaukee, and Racine;
but in our short stay little more could be had than a handshake, a
good-by, and an _au revoir_, which one hoped, that even the three or
four thousand miles soon to intervene, would not render utterly
impossible.

Of course we saw Chinatown. We emerged from the Palace Hotel well on in
the night, and did not return until almost a naughty hour in the
morning; but we all felt wel