gers tumbling over and
on to each other into the front end of the car, and if you are at the
bottom of the struggling heap, with your nose banged against the door,
and suffocating fat parties wedged on top of you, this rapid transit
slide is not quite so delightful as when you ride on the top of the
crowd.

Here you can get a good meal with a bottle of wine thrown in for
"two bits" (twenty-five cents), you can buy three different kinds of
newspapers for the same price as one, as they have no coins smaller
than a nickel. For a nickel you can ride for miles to the Cliff House
which is at the Golden Gate, where are acres of giant flowers of every
conceivable variety, all beautiful, but odorless; you watch the sea
lions nearly the size of oxen, and who roar and fight on the boulders.
Then we enter a bath-house, acres in extent, covered with glass, where
you can swim in sea water warmed by steam-pipes, listen to the band,
examine the multitude of wild animals and curiosities collected from
all parts of the world.

[Illustration: The Golden Gate of the Unpacified Pacific.]

Then we visit the city park of twelve hundred acres, once nothing but
flying sand. At first they planted on these dunes, grass roots from
South America; these fastened themselves to the sand and formed a
little soil; then were planted shrubs to stop the sand storms, then
trees, and now the real estate is not all in the air.

This little nickel will take you to a mountaintop overlooking city and
ocean, where you can sit under the Eucalyptus trees which shed
their bark instead of their leaves, and enjoy the music and the not
overmodest dramas, without extra charge.

The saloons, stores and theatres are open seven days and nights in
the week, and multitudes of all nationalities, clad in their peculiar
costumes, hobnob with each other in the most free and easy manner
imaginable, without waiting for introductions, in this the most
cosmopolitan city on earth.

Sometimes you will see the harbor literally covered with the most
delicious fruits and vegetables, dumped into the water, because the
transportation charges to market would more than eat up the proceeds
of their sale. I visited at San Jose, the large flourishing fruit
orchard of a college classmate who had spent years of hard labor and
the earnings of a lifetime, to bring his trees into bearing; but I
found he had deserted his ranch because he could not make a living
thereon, and had gone to preach