pie. There is many another dingy corner, many a young antiquity, many a
_terrain vague_ with that stamp of quaintness that the city lover seeks
and dwells on; and the indefinite prolongation of its streets, up hill
and down dale, makes San Francisco a place apart. The same street in its
career visits and unites so many different classes of society, here
echoing with drays, there lying decorously silent between the mansions
of Bonanza millionaires, to founder at last among the drifting sands
beside Lone Mountain cemetery, or die out among the sheds and lumber of
the north. Thus you may be struck with a spot, set it down for the most
romantic of the city, and, glancing at the name-plate, find it is in the
same street that you yourself inhabit in another quarter of the town.

The great net of straight thoroughfares lying at right angles, east and
west and north and south, over the shoulders of Nob Hill, the hill of
palaces, must certainly be counted the best part of San Francisco. It is
there that the millionaires are gathered together vying with each other
in display. From thence, looking down over the business wards of the
city, we can descry a building with a little belfry, and that is the
Stock Exchange, the heart of San Francisco: a great pump we might call
it, continually pumping up the savings of the lower quarters into the
pockets of the millionaires upon the hill. But these same thoroughfares
that enjoy for awhile so elegant a destiny have their lines prolonged
into more unpleasant places. Some meet their fate in the sands; some
must take a cruise in the ill-famed China quarters; some run into the
sea; some perish unwept among pig-sties and rubbish-heaps.

Nob Hill comes, of right, in the place of honour; but the two other
hills of San Francisco are more entertaining to explore. On both there
are a world of old wooden houses snoozing together all forgotten. Some
are of the quaintest design, others only romantic by neglect and age.
Some have been almost undermined by new thoroughfares, and sit high up
on the margin of the sandy cutting, only to be reached by stairs. Some
are curiously painted, and I have seen one at least with ancient
carvings panelled in its wall. Surely they are not of Californian
building, but far voyagers from round the stormy Horn, like those who
sent for them and dwelt in them at first. Brought to be the favourites
of the wealthy, they have sunk into these poor, forgotten districts,
where, li