he
crookedest railroad in the world, climbing 2000 feet above the tide of
water, we reach the lower top of the mountain, and there we find
accommodations to entertain kings and princesses, and the most eccentric
Yankee. Yet, I am assured, that scarcely one-tenth of the visitors to
California, have ever had the exceptional privilege to spend 24 hours,
on the top of Mount Tamalpais, and thereafter all through their lives
enjoy the most wonderful recollection in all God's creation.

The Alps in Europe are too stupendous to be compared with this
majestically magnificent mount of Tamalpais. The Himalaya in Asia are
too brutish to be considered as a rival of this gentle and illustrious
sky-scraper. The Olympus and Parnassus of Greece are out of season to be
paralleled with this up-to-date marvelous throne of their Majesties the
Kings of America. There is the Tamalpais Hotel, a real palace, where the
guests can rest and from the verandas or the windows of their own rooms
observe the animating sights on the left hand side the snow-covered
top-heads of the mountains and following to the right look down upon the
valleys and behold the myriads of orange and lemon and all the
fruit-bearing trees blooming all the year around and decorated like
brides in their wedding procession, not only for a few moments, till the
law ties the knot, but forever as long as the life-giving climate of
beautiful California lasts and time shall be no more.

When I went up to the Mountain, looking for employment, because I
wanted to locate myself in such a place, if I could, till the
celebration of the Knights Templar was over, I was surprised to find
that the General Manager of the Hotel and the R. R. Station was a lady,
of a striking majestical appearance, she was the controlling power of
the whole business on Mount Tamalpais, and she was not a suffragette
either. But she was a loving mother of two beautiful children, a typical
Yankee girl, well up in her teens, supervising over the chambermaids,
and variously assisting her mother, and an active boy of sixteen, the
good-fellow of everybody, and especially to the Chinamen employed in the
kitchen. Mr. Johnson was the husband and father of this happy family,
and he occupied the position of butler of the house, receiving orders
from his beloved wife.

I presented my credentials to Mrs. Johnson and she, being satisfied, was
very kind to give me the charge of two tables to wait upon in the dining
room. It