The Waterbury Democrat. [volume] (Waterbury, Conn.) 1917-1946, 1942-05-22

PORTRAIT OF A CITY
This is san Francisco X. Pearl
Of the Pacific into whose Golfers
flowed the wealth Of the Comstock
and Mother Lodes The town
where poets, painters, writers,
priests, tycoons and floozies lived
like kings and queens and etched
the immemorial saga Of the Far
West.
This Is where Samuel Langhorne
Clemens landed his byline as Mark
Twain on the old Call where
Jack London imagined THE Sea
Wolf" and was sometimes sober !. :.
where Frank Norris brought Nc
league to life and Bret Harte
won and tried his literary spurs
Edwin Markham wrote and
first published 1.-THE Man with the
Hoe" in the Examiner where
George Sterling versified like Swim
burne i. Joaquin Miller sang OF
Columbus" :. Kate Douglas Wig
gin discovered the Cabbage Patch
in Stun kindergarten and
where Gelett Burgess invented :.
and came to regret -. his Purple
Cow"
This is the Phoenix City which
sprang in steel and concrete from
the ashy Port Of the Argonauts :.
the headquarters Of good living (. :.
where license and piety rioted side
by side with more churches than
you could count +. and the Bar
barry Coast I. This Is the home Of
fighters for the underdog and
the overdog where Judge
Lynch held sway in Fort Gunny-
bags and Fremont Older fought
Schmitz and Ruef in the great vice
expose and then felt sorry for
them This is the land Of great
preachers and great mayors T.. Of
Thomas Starr King, Father Yorke,
Bishop Kip, Rabbi Nieto, Archbishop
Hanna and Bishop Parsons :. !.
of Jimmie Rolph the magnificent
and Angelo Rossi the florist
mayor.
Here where the Pacific fleet based
:. and where musters our might
Of vengeance against Japan
great grain fleets once rotted at
rickety wharves while sailors dug
with bare fingers for gold in the
Sierra and here came Richard
Henry Dana to marvel at the for
est of masts in the harbor {.
and John Masefield, who cared little
for the ships and said, "Show me
the Barbary Coastl" The Press
Club, where a camaraderie among
bitter newspaper opponents Is some
thing you cannot find in New York.
From the top Of the Mark at the
cocktail hour the greatest harbor in
the world swings north and east to
Suisun Bay and the Sacramento
and San Joaquin and south
to the fertile Santa Clara Past
Mob Hill, the world famous Fair
mont and the Pacific Union Club,
where the city's aged tycoons nurse
theiP well-earned govt the
brown hills Of Marin burgeon =. i.
and there, just right, Is The Rock
Alcatraz where convicts
launder the Army's dirty wash
from the Preside East is Berk-
eley and the thin time telling Spire
Of the U. Of California Canpanile
:. and the now silent stadium /.
And there south again are shipyards
and farthest off next Hunters
Point drydock the Oriental hustle of
q Chinese shrimp camp.
Only In San Francisco could Benz
amino Bufano nearly sell the citi-
zens O colossus in stainless metal
nlemorializing the city's patron saint
and then compromise on a steel
and granite statue of Sun Vat Sen
:. gazing longingly eastward tow
ard China from st. Mary's Square
Robert Louis Stevenson loved
this burg and they gave him a statue
in Portsmouth Square and so
did Sarah Bernhardt ). Ellen Terry
-. Nelly Melba :. Kipling as
Izzy Gomez love 1t now.
From San Francisco Steinbeck
peddled his first yarn and Sa-
royan, who played pool with the
Filipinos on Stockton street and
awed the literati on Telegraph Hill
by discovering the Old Testament
:. Prohibition never touched Tele-
graph Hill, where goats and Will
and wallace Irwin once gazed {.
for the grape season was an open
festival And there, before this
war, the Italians played bocci ball
and thought they were IN Naples.
Gertrude Stein and Isadora Dun
can were born on this bay ;. and
F'erde Grofe jumped from a Bar
barry dive to fame Yehudi Menu
hin and Ruth Slencyzinski began
here David Belasco found his
cleric's collar as prompter at the
old Baldwin theater :. Maude Ad-
ans made her debut at 8 Ade-
lima Patti got 5000 a night F. /.
While Lola Montez flourished car
riage whip to drive her admirers
away.
In the old days there were the
Cliff House and the Poodle Dog,
Blanco's and Delmonicos with their
soundproof rooms and whispered as
signations over a Napa sauterne or
a Chateau Margeaux the Odeon,
Portola Louvre, Techau Tavern,
Posse Cafe, Coppa's, Marquard's :. :.
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