the unsuspecting admirer who lived just beyond the first sandhill. This
was another surprising interior. There was plain living and high
thinking in the midst of a wilderness that was, to say the least,
uninviting; the windows rattled and the sand peppered them. Without was
the abomination of desolation; but within the desert blossomed as the
rose.

There were other homes as homely as the one I preferred--for there was
sand enough to go round. It went round and round, as God probably
intended it should, until a city sat upon it and kept it quiet. Some of
these homes were perched upon solitary hilltops, and were lost to sight
when the fog came in from the sea; and some were crowded into the thick
of the town, with all sorts of queer people for neighbors. You could,
had you chosen to, look out of a back window into a hollow square full
of cats and rats and tin cans; and upon the three sides of the
quadrangle which you were facing, you might have seen, unblushingly
revealed, all the mysteries and miseries of Europe, Asia, Africa, and
Oceanica; for they were all of them represented by delegates.

Of course there were handsome residences (not so very many of them as
yet), where there was fine art--some of the finest. But often this art
was to be found in the saloons, and the subjects chosen would hardly
find entertainment elsewhere. The furnishing of the houses was within
the bounds of good taste. Monumental marbles were not erected by the
hearth-side; the window drapery was diaphanous rather than dense and
dowdy. The markets of San Francisco were much to blame for the
flashiness of the domestic interior: they were stocked with the gaudiest
fixtures and textures, and in the inspection of them the eye was
bewildered and the taste demoralized.