The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-05-12
A SAN FRANCISCO SUNDAY.

| 1t is not time yet for the residents of the
| interior to come in large numbers to San
Francisco for their summer outing, nor is
it yet hardly time for the people OF the
| City to seek the pleasures and benefits OF a
| trip into the country. 1t is the best time,
therefore, for the residents of the City to
make the most of the delightful interval for
casting about to find near at hand the best
means for enjoying a Sunday. Those
whose inclinations lead them churchward
cannot do better than following their bent.
There may be some who regard the taking
of wholesome pleasure on Sunday as desc
Grafton. These have the clearest of titles
to their ground of belief, and no reasonable
fault can be found with them.
1t is instructive to observe that promi-
nent among this class may be found those
who have leisure and means to take a
wholesome outing on other days of the
week. They are fortunate in this, al
though, perhaps, unfortunate in being
unable to establish thereby an aristocratic
class custom, which has considerable in
fuence among even the poorest of us.
But there is one broad class of San
Franciscans who acknowledge no pre-
cedent except that of necessity, strength
ened by customs which they have brought
from abroad. The population of San
Francisco is wonderfully cosmopolitan,
and it is interesting to note that very
large proportion of its foreign residents
are either from Catholic countries di-
rectly, or from those in which the Lutheran
Reformation has worked no radical change
in the customs which ancient Catholic
uses made national. Thus, although most
of the Germans among US are either
Lutherans or non-Catholics of some other
kind, they have regard for Sunday very
similar to that of such Catholic countries
as France, Italy Ireland and the Iberian
Peninsula. In all of these countries,
whether Protestant or Catholic, Sunday is
regarded as day for wholesome and re-
freshing outing. And SO generously does
the more strict American and English SEN
| timent of total disregard of Sunday as a
day OF pleasurable relaxation yield to the
pressure of the foreign sentiment preva-
lent among us that San Francisco presents
tie interesting spectacle of an American
city whose majority is almost distinctively
European in its free use of Sunday for an
outing.
| 1t is city of wonderful contrasts.
| Strict Sunday conservatism exercises its
own powerful sway, but lying outside the
| limits of that influence is an immense
sentiment which has never felt its pressure.
So long as the elements of lawlessness,
| dissipation and sordidness are absent from
the Sunday conduct of the foreigners
among US, the means for Sunday recrea-
ton which they adopt are pleasurable and
inspiring; and it is not broad soul that
would deny to conscience and opportunity
any rational means for Sunday recreation
AS we have SO many whose only possible
day for enjoying the noble benefits of a
days outing is Sunday, it becomes all the
more our duty to make the opportunity as
extended and the manner of its exercise
as wholesome as possible.
New York excepted, San Francisco has
more strangers to itself than any other
city in the Union. We have aliens among
us-the Chinese, for instance-with whom
it is impossible to share our pleasures and
holidays. But the vast army of Latins
Gauls, Slavs and Celts who prevail in oul
midst even though many of them may
speak tongues strange to our ears, are
members of the great family to which we
belong. They know the same God and
the same Christ, and are trying in theil
own way to reach the end which we have
in view 1t is therefore pleas urable to one
of a broad mind to see them enjoying life
in their own way, and to draw profitable
lesson from the intelligence with which
they exercise the fine art of extracting
wholesome pleasure from the presence O
Sunday in San Francisco.