of South Park crowded one another about the oval enclosure and their
common garden was the smaller oval of green and roses.

On Rincon Hill the architecture was more varied and the houses that
covered all sides of the hill were surrounded by high-walled gardens
whose heavy bushes of Castilian roses were the only reminder in this
already modern San Francisco of the Spain that had made California a
land of romance for nearly a century; the last resting place on this
planet of the Spirit of Arcadia ere she vanished into space before
the gold-seekers.

On far-flung heights beyond the business section crowded between
Market and Clay Streets were isolated mansions, built by prescient
men whose belief in the rapid growth of the city to the north and
west was justified in due course, but which sheltered at present
amiable and sociable ladies who lamented their separation by vast
spaces from that aristocratic quarter of the south.

But they had their carriages, and on a certain Sunday afternoon
several of these arks drawn by stout horses might have been seen
crawling fearfully down the steep hills or floundering through the
sand until they reached Market Street; when the coachmen cracked
their whips, the horses trotted briskly, and shortly after began to
ascend Rincon Hill.

Mrs. Hunt McLane, the social dictator of her little world, had
recently moved from South Park into a large house on Rincon Hill that
had been built by an eminent citizen who had lost his fortune as
abruptly as he had made it; and this was her housewarming. It was safe
to say that her rooms would be crowded, and not merely because her