ll conspicuous from the city is little more than
a great cliff rising abruptly from the extreme north end of the graded
ledge on the summit of Nob Hill, which, in its turn, almost overhangs
the steep and populous ascent from the valley. In "early days" none but
the goat could cling to those rough hills that all but stood on end, and
the brush was so thick and the titles so uncertain that their future
distinction was undreamed of. Then came a determined period of grading
which embraced the heights in due course, titles were settled, and many
that foresaw the ultimate possession of that great valley now known as
"South of Market Street"--but which in its haughty youth embraced South
Park and Rincon Hill--by the tenacious sons of Erin and Germania, moved
to the uplands while lots could still be bought for a song. The Jack
Belmonts, the Yorbas, the Polks, and others of the first aristocracy to
follow the Spanish, made Nob Hill fashionable before a new class of
millionaires sprang up in a night, and indulged its fresh young fancy
with monstrous wooden structures holding a large portion of converted
capital. Mrs. Yorba, who led society in the Eighties, when it was as
exclusive as a small German principality, was disposed to snub all
parvenus. But the young people made their way. When Mary Belmont
returned from school, and, chaperoned by a widowed relative, gave at
least a dance a month until she married, and many a one after, the heirs
of all grades thought nothing of leaving their carriages at the foot of
the cliff to climb the precarious stair; groping blindly more often than
not through the rains of winter or the fogs of summer. To-day Isabel's
neighbors wisely made no such demands upon the pampered, but in that
incomparably older time the young people would have climbed to the stars
for the sake of the lavish hospitality of the gay indulgent young
hostess; and if some of the youths rolled down the hill when the lights
went out, that was hardly a matter to excite indignant comment in a city
where drink was so admittedly the curse that it was philosophically
accepted with such other standing evils as fogs, trade-winds,
small-pox, mud-holes, dust-storms, and unmentionable politics.

When Mary Belmont became the wife of James Otis, one of the greatest
ranchers in California--in which State, unlike other fervent patriots of
that era, he had been born--and a brilliant figure in one of the most
notable legal groups of any time, s