s mendacious
and evasive. After all, it really did not matter what I said. He could
not understand. I can only hope and pray that none of the readers of the
"Pioneer" will ever see that portentous interview. The man made me out
to be an idiot several sizes more drivelling than my destiny intended,
and the rankness of his ignorance managed to distort the few poor facts
with which I supplied him into large and elaborate lies. Then, thought
I, "the matter of American journalism shall be looked into later on. At
present I will enjoy myself."

No man rose to tell me what were the lions of the place. No one
volunteered any sort of conveyance. I was absolutely alone in this big
city of white folk. By instinct I sought refreshment, and came upon a
barroom full of bad Salon pictures in which men with hats on the backs
of their heads were wolfing food from a counter. It was the institution
of the "free lunch" I had struck. You paid for a drink and got as much
as you wanted to eat. For something less than a rupee a day a man can
feed himself sumptuously in San Francisco, even though he be a bankrupt.
Remember this if ever you are stranded in these parts.

Later I began a vast but unsystematic exploration of the streets. I
asked for no names. It was enough that the pavements were full of white
men and women, the streets clanging with traffic, and that the restful
roar of a great city rang in my ears. The cable cars glided to all
points of the compass at once. I took them one by one till I could go no
further. San Francisco has been pitched down on the sand bunkers of the
Bikaneer desert. About one fourth of it is ground reclaimed from the
sea--any old-timers will tell you all about that. The remainder is just
ragged, unthrifty sand hills, to-day pegged down by houses.

From an English point of view there has not been the least attempt
at grading those hills, and indeed you might as well try to grade the
hillocks of Sind. The cable cars have for all practical purposes made
San Francisco a dead level. They take no count of rise or fall, but
slide equably on their appointed courses from one end to the other of a
six-mile street. They turn corners almost at right angles, cross other
lines, and for aught I know may run up the sides of houses. There is
no visible agency of their flight, but once in awhile you shall pass
a five-storied building humming with machinery that winds up an
everlasting wire cable, and the initiated will tell y