The San Francisco call., 1898-01-16

for Honolulu; the mate on that English ship e-oing down to South Africa ls au old chum of his; the first engineer on another just arrived from Australia Is his particular friend; and about a ships his tory and the various trips 1t has made he can talk ith0ut culver to the cyni- cal old German who has just joined and has all a sailors contempt for a lands mans knowledge.
 All ships look alike to me, and are equally lOvable. A thing that floats. that meets with exquisitely graceful mobility every mood of the changeful sea, whose every plank and sail are impregnated with the poetry of the sea and the TO- nance Of far-off lands is that fascinat- ing thing, a boat.
 If ] were a boy. I'd make the acquaint- ance of a water front reporter I might yearn for the personal friendship of the policeman on my block, or for the honor and glory that might be mine in boy dom could I boast of intimacy with the despot who daily exercises the horses of the nearest engine house. But all the thousand horsepower of boyish energies I should devote to the water front re- porter. For him I'd flag. For him I'd toll. His reportoriaI heart I'd soften with that sincere fattery which lies in imitation I'd anticipate his every wish. I'd dog his steps. and dOg-like. be as grateful if he noticed me as I should be eager to disappear did his briny lord ships mood seem unpropitious.
 For the water front reporter holds the key to living stories, tales whose charm is greater than the Arabian Nights and Robinson Crusoe put together. True. in the course Of the years of experience that make him the glorious being he is, the water front has lost its poetry to him. But if you're boy you've stores of r-Trv ,1y-lf nature that pretends to gruf, prosaic disillusion. Let but the genius of the boy give the opportunity; boyhood will do the rest.
 If you're so unfortunate as not to be a boy, the water front will not have quite so potent a charm. It will lack the per sonal possibilities, for instance, that you might give it were you with youths inno- cent fc4deness to imagine yourself at one moment a Scandinavian mate on this ship, and the next a Scotch captain on that; in an hour changing nahonaIties and des- tinations with all the speed and facility of @ day-dream.
 But it is not only to youth that the shores of the bay are so attractive. Every nationality under the sun, every type. of human nature, all the evidence that San Francisco is a cosmopolitan city, IS to be found along the miles of sea wall, against which the anchored ships lie. close load ing and unloading.
 On board the Belgic the Chinese sailors and deckhands are scrubbing industri- ousIy, preparatory to Saturdays depart ure for Australia. Rather superior look ing Chinese 1aborers, these, in their dark blue shirts and trousers. We watched them loading meats into the refrigera- tor, pigs and lambs and sides of beef, with the giblet appurtenances, enough to feed an army. Here's a Chinese boy, who works steadily handing one butch cred innocent after the other to his com panion in the refrigerator beyond. He wears a peculiar woolen cap, turned up helmetwise on the side, and his intelli- gent brown face watches every move of the men working with him, while he keeps up a steady clang of Chinese ex- hortation that orally testifies to the business going on aboard
 Far back-I believe the water front re- porters call it "aft''-a group of about twenty Chinese are huddled. They have come over on the Belgic and have been detained because of Uncle Sans insistent fussiness about certificates. If their cases are not decided by Saturday they will be transferred to some other vessel.
 And who pays for their board in the meantime" I asked the inspector, who was surrounded by a chattering crowd of CelesUals.
 The Chinese themselves" he an- Ewered. More than that, they put up a bond to pay their passage back should