ere is only one San Francisco! We have about six of
these French restaurants--ever taste anything like these frogs in Paris?
You scarcely ever see anybody in them at this hour with an 'all-night'
reputation. There are plenty of other resorts, a good many of them under
the sidewalks, where the dinner is almost as good but where a man
doesn't take his wife. And up-stairs--here--and in a few others--well,
if a woman is seen entering by the side door she is done for. But then
she isn't usually seen. Lord! if these walls could speak! The
divorce-mills would explode. The waiters all invest in real estate.
Policemen send their daughters to Europe, and the boss politicians get
rich so fast they spend money almost like a gentleman. In the hotels you
are all but asked for your marriage license, but in what is
euphemistically known as the French restaurants--well, high-toned vice
comes high, but the town is fairly bursting with accommodations for
every purse. No town like this!" he exclaimed, gazing into his lifted
glass and with the accent of deep feeling. "No town on God's footstool.
Nothing like it. Wouldn't live anywhere else if you gave me the planet.
Of course I've reformed, but then it's the _atmosphere_--not a taint of
American Puritanism--European and something more--the wild flavor of a
new and unique civilization. Precious few California men that go to New
York to live but are too glad to come back; and Eastern men, like
Trennahan, who have had a long taste of it, couldn't be paid to live
anywhere else."

"So all the legends of San Francisco are true?" said Gwynne, who
preferred Stone to his wife.

"Couldn't exaggerate if you tried. Wait till I show it to you. No blazed
trail nor special policeman detailed to protect our precious skulls. I
know the ropes and am not afraid to go anywhere."

"How do you like your new work?" asked Isabel, hastily, not knowing what
he might say next. "I should fancy that newspaper life would suit you."

"Does! Never hit a job I liked as well. Jolly set of fellows. Up all
night. What more could a fellow ask? No more aristocracy of art for me.
I'm neither a Peters nor a Keith, and I wish I'd found it out ten years
ago. If a man can make a good living, what in--ah, what on earth more
can he want in a town that gives him the best things in the world to
eat, the jolliest all-night life, the finest fellows in the world, the
prettiest women to look at, a climate that puts new life into old
hor