, why should they have placed a
prison there as a monument to men's failure to order their lives in
harmony with nature. Alcatraz, most beautiful island in the most
beautiful bay, you sound an ugly, sinister, most unhappy undertone in
the morning's symphony.

Still it is a symphony. A symphony of San Francisco Bay. Why shouldn't
the composers put it into music. We're sick of the song of the huntsman
by the brasses, the strings and the wood instruments. With Whitman we
exclaim: "Come, Muse, migrate from Aeonia," and come out here to the
West, and conserve the symphony of the bay which is already composed and
waiting.

And for the argument, the overture, the prelude, there could be a
sailing schooner with sails all set coming into the Golden Gate, in the
full brilliant sunlight, or mysteriously through a fog, or against a
sunset sky. It should be "full and by" like that beautiful painting by
Coulter in the stock exchange of the Merchants' Building.

Symphony of San Francisco Bay, boom of fog horns, calls and answers of
the ferries, chug of the fishermen's boats, twink of lights in the
harbor at night, rhythm of sea gulls, and the brooding fog to soften it
all. "Come, Muse, migrate from Aeonia."

Safe on the Sidewalk

Are there others, I wonder, who feel as I do about crossing the street?
There must be. Now I, when I cross, say Market street at Third, I run. I
take my life and my bundles in my hand and run, darting swift glances to
the left and to the right. It looks "hick." I know it looks "hick." And
I care. But I prefer to be alive and countrified than sophisticated in
an ambulance and so I run.

At corners, too. I think corners are worse. For there the machines may
turn around and chase me, which they often do. It's a horrible feeling.

There must be others who feel as I do about crossing the street, but
they never betray it. I watch to see and when they cross, they just
cross--that's all. Not with nonchalance exactly, but with ease and
assurance. Once I actually saw a man, a native son, I'm sure, roll a
cigarette as he crossed at a point where even the traffic cop looked
nervous.

No one ever gets killed or even injured. But always everybody is getting
almost killed and almost injured. They like it. It's a sort of sport.
I've noticed it more since the city's gone dry. The game is, if you are
walking, to see how close to a machine you can come and not hit it.

Street cars, machines and people all go