not to
be measured by the standards of Time. Her grandfather had stood on this
hill after his Sunday climb and looked over and down a ragged wilderness
to the city bursting out of its shell--a wretched huddle of shacks and
tents by the water's edge. The bay no doubt was crowded with ships from
every corner of the world, many of them deserted, unmanned, forced to
lie idle until the return of the hungry disappointed gold-seekers. That
was less than sixty years ago. In the first ten years of its rapid
growth the city had burned seven times, millions blazing out in an hour.

To-day San Francisco was replete not only with life but with wealth,
talents, and every variety of enterprise; it was as full of fads and
cults and artistic groups as London itself; it had sent forth authors,
artists, mummers, singers--and millionaires by the score. Many of the
art treasures of the world had been brought here and hidden from the
vulgar in those awful impermanent "palatial mansions." Some of the
finest libraries of the world were here. It had its bibliomaniacs, its
collectors, its precieux. And yet what a lonely city it was, stranded on
the edge of the still half-vacant western section of the United States,
with all the Pacific before it. Save for the rim of towns across the
bay, which were little more than a part of itself, it watched the Orient
alone, and was far too gay and careless, too self-absorbed and insolent,
to keep its jaws on the alert. Tact it was much too high-handed to
cultivate. It welcomed the hungry Oriental for so long as he was useful,
and when he outstayed his welcome, incontinently kicked him out. San
Francisco's intensity of independence as well as of civic pride was due
in part no doubt to the isolation which compelled it to be self-centred,
and to its unconscious dislike of the elder breeds beyond the Rocky
Mountains; but largely to the old adventurous reckless gambling spirit
and the habit of sleeping on its pistol. These first causes had
developed individuality to such proportions that the hair of a
Californian bristled when he was alluded to as a "Westerner," or even as
a mere American.

And with time the patriotism of the San Franciscan waxed rather than
waned. It was no longer the fashion to take one's money to New York,
merely because of the higher cost of living that made a millionaire
"feel his oats," and of the allure of the older and more difficult
society to his women. San Franciscans still fled from