dy else's; first for my own country--first,
please God! for the United States of America. And so, having in the
past, too fully, perhaps, and more than once, considered the question
of our new possessions in the light of our duty, I propose now to look
at them further, and unblushingly, in the light of our interests.

[Sidenote: The Old Faith of Californians.]

Which way do your interests lie? Which way do the interests of
California and the city of San Francisco lie?

Three or four days ago, when your President honored me with the summons
I am now obeying, there came back to me a vague memory of the visions
cherished by the men you rate the highest in California, your
"Pioneers" and "Forty-Niners," as to the future of the empire they were
founding on this coast. There lingered in my mind the flavor at least
of an old response by a California public man to the compliment a
"tenderfoot" New-Yorker, in the innocence of his heart, had intended to
pay, when he said that with this splendid State, this glorious harbor,
and the Pacific Ocean, you have all the elements to build up here the
New York of the West. The substance of the Californian's reply was
that, through mere lack of knowledge of the country to which he
belonged, the well-meaning New-Yorker had greatly underrated the future
that awaited San Francisco--that long before Macaulay's New-Zealander
had transferred himself from the broken arches of London Bridge to
those of Brooklyn, it would be the pride and boast of the denizens of
those parts that New York had held its own so finely as still to be
fairly called the San Francisco of the East!

While the human memory is the most tenacious and nearest immortal of
all things known to us, it is also at times the most elusive. Even with
the suggestions of Mr. Hittell and the friendly files of the Mechanics'
Library, I did not succeed in finding that splendid example of San
Francisco faith which my memory had treasured. Yet I found some things
not very unlike it to show what manner of men they were that laid the
foundations of this commonwealth on the Pacific, what high hopes
sustained them, and what radiant future they confidently anticipated.

Here, for example, was Mr. William A. Howard, whom I found declaring,
not quite a third of a century ago, that San Francisco would yet be the
largest American city on the largest ocean in the world. At least, so
he is reported in "The Bulletin" and "The Call," though "The Alta"