its most conspicuous section. The homes of these California kings are
adorned with costly works of art, choice paintings, and beautifully
chiselled marbles. During the sessions of the General Convention the
Crocker mansions on the north side of the avenue were the centre
of attraction in the liberal hospitality dispensed there and the
courtesies shown to many of the Bishops and other Clergy. On the
evening of Wednesday, October the ninth, Bishop Nichols held a
reception for the Bishops, other Clergy, the Lay Deputies, and their
friends, in the Hopkins' mansion, on the south side of California
avenue. This is now used as an Art Institute, and it is admirably
adapted to its purpose. The building was thronged all the evening by
the members of the Convention and the representatives of San Francisco
society. Five thousand people high in the councils of the Church
and the Nation and in social walks were in attendance; and it was
impossible to accommodate all who came. It is said that hundreds
were turned away. The writer and his friends considered themselves
fortunate to be able to thread their way through the crowd without
being crushed or having their garments torn. It was the grandest
function of a social character which ever took place on the Pacific
coast. The costly paintings adorning chambers, galleries and reception
rooms, the splendid specimens of statuary, the numerous pictures,
the brilliant lights, the strains of joyous music, but above all the
moving throng of handsome women beautifully arrayed, and the noble
bearing of Bishop, Priest and layman, with the fine intellectual faces
seen on all sides, made this reception a scene never to be forgotten.
Who, in the days of forty-nine, would have dreamed that, a little over
a half a century later, there would be such a magnificent gathering
of intellect and beauty,--men and women with lofty aims and noted for
their achievements in letters and art, and their prominence in Church
and State, and excelling in virtuous deeds, on a hill which was then a