The San Francisco call., 1910-11-20

states affairs. makers OF peoples
thought; at the other. Cantonese ped
dlers haggling with Tuscan fishermen
over the white devils nickel, each
bowling at the other in an alien but
common tongue. Christian churches OF
every type; temple of Greek byzan-
tine a shrine of Buddha, a housetop
where the Mussulman faced the east,
an alley cellar where Polynesian
sailor groyeled to his idol of clay-aH
faiths were there, and all unbeliefs,
from the oriental acceptance of fate
to the uncertain philosophy of the ee-
cidental agnostic; and. over and about
the clamor and the complacence,l shri1
and acrid with false brasses and bleat-
ing reeds. the commercial snarl of Asia
drowned the others with its myriad
josses obscured by blue punk smoke
and silk gowned money changing
. priests.
= The great, the rich, the downtrodden.
the namelessly foul. all lived In the 16
blocks from the fountain to the bay;
all businesses from tawdry foreign
shops to the emporiums of merchant
princes whose doors advertised that
seven languag ges were spoken within;
cafes for every purse, from the ex-
elusives and the racetrack idlers
drinking champagne at a table Is floors
above the street to the windowless,
basement wineshops OF Telegraph hill,
all vices for here the hoary iniquity of
the middle kingdom and the sea ISL
ands traded nanelessly with the wick
ednesses that the west had brought
down from Sodom and Babylon; and the
morphine fends lolling about the Ste
venson monument in Portsmouth
square leered across at the We
nal justice of the city courts
the dragon flags of the Chinese
roofs Knocked the foresworn ideality Of
the Mount and Magma Charta.
And into this glut of alien life the
white race poured all that was pic
turesque, bizarre, inordinate, from the
Rio Grande to Great Slave Lake; all
that the defiant young west could en-
rich and send to rot and revel in the
port Miners from Tanana, Pelly,
Amargosa and the spaces of Death
valley and Nevada; cowboys from the
Inyo deserts and Arizona. Utah and
Montana; lumberjaeks from California
valleys as little known as the fast
nesses of Tibet: soldiers from every
post between the two frontieFs-lithe
men with burned. lean faces. the seuf
of a pauthers footpads in the nervous
spring of their heels. ready with life,
eager for play in the ingenious, shrewd
humor OF the American
Old San Francisco was as inevitable
to the dweller beyond the Rockies as
God to Mahommed, the very phrase with
which it was summed spoke that-any-
where over the range IL was The city
That meant. no place on earth but the
gray town, prematurely wrinkled like
a woman in whom youths excesses too
long burned, which huddled on point
OF sand. scourged with winds, racked
by fogs, scintillant with dust notes in
the cold sunshine, where lived the most
cheerful people in the world; where
now the gayest courage In the world
serenely builds.
Old San Francisco was fashioned by
the weather and q two bit piece. The
climate forbade the roseate dalliances
of youth, moonlight sittings, twilight
porches, trysts of summer nights; year
long after sunset the guerrilla trades
fogs harried the bleak suburbs routing
the dwellers so that they fed to the
downtown and under the arc lights de-
fed the somber sky. The blatant Pa
cific drove them to their lubricity; they
invented a prodigality of meat light
and music for two bits that no man
might lack cheer, and being a homeless
people of brave wit, an ingenious peo-
pie of mad individualism, dwellers in a
town of superlatives. gliding the COM
mon with defying genius, on the op-
timistic two bits they reared a method
of life artistically unique, hecticalIy ma
terialistic, astonishingly brilliant, and
most potently hunan--which last al
once explains old San Francisco Moth
ing was bad to the gray city that or
fered a pretext for dining; nothing
could be good that forbade Fellowship
It lived, loved and died in the radiance
of it's gorgeous, labyrinthine cafes
laughing with its merry mistresses
though the bread be stale, the wine
raw and the jewel on her finger a b11
Of glass. 1t had no patience with q
virtue that would not feast with it
jest with it, forget with it in it's curl
ously childlike amorousness: but will
an understanding heart the ten law: