again. The depth of suffering and the
credulity revealed were often embarrassing and made me feel a fraud when
I was aiming merely to amuse. I was glad again to become my undisguised
self.

It was in the late eighties that Julia Ward Howe visited her sister near
the city, and I very gladly was of service in helping her fill some of
her engagements. She gave much pleasure by lectures and talks and
enjoyed visiting some of our attractions. She was charmed with the
Broadway Grammar School, where Jean Parker had achieved such wonderful
results with the foreign girls of the North Beach locality. I remember
meeting a distinguished educator at a dinner, and I asked him if he had
seen the school. He said he had. "What do you think of it?" I asked him.
"I think it is the finest school in the world," he said. I took Mrs.
Howe to a class. She was asked to say a few words, and in her beautiful
voice she gained instant and warm attention. She asked all the little
girls who spoke French in their homes to stand. Many rose. Then she
called for Spanish. Many more stood. She followed with Scandinavian and
Italian. But when she came to those who used English she found few. She
spoke to several in their own tongue and was most enthusiastically
greeted. I also escorted her across the bay to Mills College, with which
she was greatly pleased. She proved herself a good sport. With true
Bohemianism, she joined in luncheon on the ferryboat, eating ripe
strawberries from the original package, using her fingers and enjoying
the informality. She fitted every occasion with dignity or humor. In the
pulpit at our church she preached a remarkably fine sermon.

Mozoomdar, the saintly representative of the Brahmo Somaj, was a highly
attractive man. His voice was most musical, and his bearing and manner
were beautiful. He seemed pure spirit and a type of the deeply religious
nature. Nor was he without humor. In speaking of his visit to England he
said that his hosts generally seemed to think that for food he required
only "an unlimited quantity of milk."

Politics has had a wide range in San Francisco,--rotten at times, petty
at others, with the saving grace of occasional idealism. The
consolidation act and the People's Party touched high-water mark in
reform. With the lopping off of the San Mateo end of the peninsula in
1856, one board of supervisors was substituted for the three that had
spent $2,646,000 the year before. With E.W. Burr at its head, un