to replevin the furniture.
But these days of poverty passed away, and in later years the club came
to know prosperity beyond the dreams of the good fellows who founded it.

THE WICKEDEST AND GAYEST.

The Bohemian is gone, but the spirit that founded and made it still
exists, and we may look to see it rise, like the phoenix, from its
ashes.

San Francisco was often called the wickedest city in America. It was
hardly that, it was simply the gayest. It was not the home of purity;
neither is any other city. What other cities do behind closed doors San
Francisco did not hesitate to do in the open.

In Eastern cities the police have driven vice into tenements, lodging
houses and apartments. San Francisco did not do that. She had certain
quarters where, according to unwritten law, vice was allowed to abide,
and she did not try to hide the fact that it could be found there. She
was not secretly immoral; she was frankly unmoral.

She did not believe in driving her vice from the open where it could be
recognized and controlled--prevented from doing any more harm than it
was possible to stop--into districts of the city where good people dwell
and purity would feel its contaminating influence. There were regions in
which the respectable never set foot, haunts of acknowledged vice which
for virtue to enter would be to lose caste.

As for its gayety, San Francisco was proud of the reputation of being
the Paris of America. Its women were beautiful, and they knew it. They
liked to adorn their beauty with fine clothes and peacock along the
streets on matinee days. If you asked a San Francisco girl why she wore
such expensive clothes, she would say, frankly, "Because I like to have
the men admire me," and she would see no harm in saying it. There was
very little sham about the San Francisco women. Their men understood
them and worshiped them. They bore themselves with the freedom that
was theirs by right of their heritage of open-air living, the Bohemian
atmosphere they breathed, the unconventional character of their
surroundings. Their figures were strong and well moulded, their faces
bloomed with health like the roses in their gardens. They drew the wine
of laughter from their balmy California air. Sorrow and trouble sat
lightly on their shoulders.

There was no end of enjoyments. After the theatre they would go to
Zinkaud's, Tate's, the Palace or some other of the many places of
resort, for a snack to eat and a spell unde