the newspaper buildings, many big and little hotels, numberless
restaurants, the theatres and the shopping district. The region about
Union Square, Geary street, Grant Avenue, Post and Sutter streets, is a
busy and attractive area. You could live in San Francisco for a month
and ask no greater entertainment than walking through it. Beyond are
various foreign quarters and districts inevitably growing colder and
more residential in aspect as they get farther away from the city heart.
Beyond the heights where one catches glimpses of the ocean, the city
slopes to abrupt cliffs along the outer harbor, and here are mansions
whose windy gardens overhang the surf. Beyond Market street is the area
described in the phrase, "south of the slot". Superficially drab and
gray in aspect, it has been celebrated again and again in song and
story. From this region have come the majority of San Francisco's
champion athletes. Near here beats the red heart of the labor world. And
not far off still stands that exquisite gem of Spanish catholicism -
Mission Dolores.

Here and there - and it is a little like meeting a ghost in a crowded
street - through all the beauty and freshness of the new city project
the bones of the old: the lofty ruins, ivy-hung, of a huge Nob Hill
Palace here; the mere foundation, bush-encircled, of a big old family
mansion there; elaborate rusty fences of Mid-Victorian iron which
enclose nothing; wide low steps of Mid-Victorian marble which lead
nowhere. The San Franciscan speaks always with a tender, regretful
affection of that dead city, but, as is natural, he speaks of it less
and less. For myself, I am glad now that I never saw the city that was;
for I can love the city that is with no arriere pensee.

They serve, however - those bones of a dead past - to remind the
stranger of a marvelous rebuilding feat, to accent the virility and