such as they were, used to come from very distant parts of the globe in
the early Fifties; some of them were portable, and had been sent across
the sea to be set up at the purchaser's convenience. They could be
pitched like tents on the shortest possible notice, and the fact was
evident in many cases.

Our house--a double one of modest proportions--was of brick, and I
think the only one on our side of the street for a considerable
distance. There was a brick house over the way, on the corner of
Montgomery Street, with a balcony in front of it and a grocery on the
ground-floor. That grocery was like a country store: one could get
anything there; and from the balcony above there was a wonderful view.
Indeed that was one of the jumping-off places; for a steep stairway led
down the hill to the dock two hundred feet below. As for our neighbors,
they dwelt in frame houses, one or two stories in height; and his was
the happier house that had a little strip of flowery-land in front of
it, and a breathing space in the rear.

The school--our first school in California--backed into the hill across
the street from us. The girls and the boys had each an inclosed space
for recreation. It could not be called a playground, for there was no
ground visible. It was a platform of wood heavily timbered beneath and
fenced in; from the front of it one might have cast one's self to the
street below, at the cost of a broken bone or two. In those days more
than one leg was fractured by an accidental fall from a soaring
sidewalk.

Above and beyond the school-house Telegraph Hill rose a hundred feet or
more. Our street marked the snow-line, as it were; beyond it the Hill
was not inhabited save by flocks of goats that browsed there all the