ke old town toasts, they keep each other silently in
countenance. Telegraph Hill and Rincon Hill, these are the two dozing
quarters that I recommend to the city dilettante. There stand these
forgotten houses, enjoying the unbroken sun and quiet. There, if there
were such an author, would the San Francisco Fortune de Boisgobey pitch
the first chapter of his mystery. But the first is the quainter of the
two, and commands, moreover, a noble view. As it stands at the turn of
the bay, its skirts are all waterside, and round from North Reach to the
Bay Front you can follow doubtful paths from one quaint corner to
another. Everywhere the same tumble-down decay and sloppy progress, new
things yet unmade, old things tottering to their fall; everywhere the
same out-at-elbows, many-nationed loungers at dim, irregular grog-shops;
everywhere the same sea-air and isleted sea-prospect; and for a last and
more romantic note, you have on the one hand Tamalpais standing high in
the blue air, and on the other the tail of that long alignment of
three-masted, full-rigged, deep-sea ships that make a forest of spars
along the eastern front of San Francisco. In no other port is such a
navy congregated. For the coast trade is so trifling, and the ocean
trade from round the Horn so large, that the smaller ships are swallowed
up, and can do nothing to confuse the majestic order of these merchant
princes. In an age when the ship-of-the-line is already a thing of the
past, and we can never again hope to go coasting in a cock-boat between
the "wooden walls" of a squadron at anchor, there is perhaps no place on
earth where the power and beauty of sea architecture can be so perfectly
enjoyed as in this bay.

THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS

_Vixerunt nonnulli in agris, delectati re sua
familiari. His idem propositum fuit quod
regibus, ut ne qua re agerent, ne cui
parerent, libertate uterentur: cujus proprium
est sic vivere ut velis._

CIC. DE OFF. I. XX.

TO
VIRGIL WILLIAMS
AND
DORA NORTON WILLIAMS

THESE SKETCHES ARE AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED
BY THEIR FRIEND