get off and get on again I did as I was told. With blind faith I told the conductors to put me off and they did. I continued in this way until long after midnight when I found myself at a lonely corner with no one in sight. I waited and waited and was getting nervous when I spied a blue uniform. I looked sharply to see if he were a motorman, a fireman or an officer from the Presidio. I am careful about these matters since last summer when I was coming North on the President, and asked a naval officer for some ice water. I rushed up to him and told him, which was true, that it was the first time I had ever seen a policeman when I wanted one. This led him into a defense of the San Francisco police, which I told him was quite unnecessary with me for I thought them the finest policemen in the world, probably because they are so Irish.

"Irish," said he with a twinkle, "I'm not Irish."

We chatted awhile until the Union street car came along, and then that policeman who said he wasn't Irish leaned over and whispered confidentially, "If you miss this car, there'll be another." I suppose they get lonesome.

You see how I am wandering away from my subject. That is because I followed the Union street car. It switches from subject to subject just like that. It begins with the wonderful retail markets of San Francisco, and then changes abruptly to all sorts of sociological problems, then before we know it gives us a beautiful marine view, and then drops us down where the proletariat lives, then up to the homes of the rich and mighty, and ends in the military.

Everyone should sight-see by the little Union street car.

The Latin Meets the Oriental

In that spot where Chinatown merges into the Latin quarter there must be, I think, a Director of Delightful Situations who holds dominion there. For instance, can you imagine anything more subtle than a group of large fat women haranguing, in Italian-American, a poor thin Chinaman over some bargains in vegetables?

In a place which marks the line of cleavage between the two quarters is a picture store containing in its window religious pictures, enlarged family photographs of Filipinos, and, of course, views of the Point Lobos cypress. There is something very appealing about that window. Pictures of Jesus, no matter how lurid they are, never fall short of dignity. And it seems not at all incongruous that He should be there in the midst of all those strange human contacts.

There are not only contacts between the Latin and the Oriental, but anything unusual may come to light in that particular neighborhood. A buff cochin rooster was wandering about the street the other day. Stepping high and picking up choice tidbits and showing off before his harem of hens who peeked at him from their boxes, he strutted about exactly as though he had been in his own Petaluma barnyard.

One day I saw an enormous negro running through the streets with a piece of new, green felt bound around his stomach. Now why should a huge negro run through the street with a piece of new green felt around his stomach? No one knows. And another time a small Chinese maiden bumped into me because she was so absorbed in that great American institution, the funny sheet.

On one of those side streets, in there somewhere, one of those streets untoured by tourists, I saw some Chinese boys, dressed in American "Boss of the Road" unionalls, playing baseball and calling the call of Babe Ruth in sing-song Chinese. Then near them was an empty lot and what do you suppose it was filled with? Scotch thistles, and edged with wild corn flowers. Even Nature enters into the fun.

There is a story of an Italian who went through the streets somewhere on Leavenworth, calling, "Nica fresha flowers," and from the opposite side of the street a Chinaman with flowers would call, "Samee over here." All went well until the Chinaman began to outsell the other, when the Italian remonstrated. "Yella for yourself, see," he said, to which the Chinaman answered, "Go to hellee," and went on as before.

This story was told to me by very reliable eye witnesses. The buff cochin rooster and the huge negro and all the others I saw myself. And many other strange things which I have not room to write, I saw in that spot where Chinatown merges into the Latin quarter.

The Pepper and Salt Man

He was a man, I should say about sixty years old, a most uninteresting age, and a homely, weather-beaten fellow too, when you stopped to look at him. His suit was pepper-and-salt, and he was just like his suit. Good as gold, I have no doubt, a roomer of whom his landlady could say: "He comes and he goes and is never a speck of trouble."

Still, he might have been as good as Saint Anthony but no one would ever have noticed him except for what happened. What happened wasn't so much either but it was enough to illumine that dun, common-place man so that everyone in the side-seating trolley was suddenly aware of his presence. What happened was ten months old and was a girl.

A regular girl, one hundred per cent feminine. One could tell just by the way she wore her clothes, by her daintiness, by the tilt of her bonnet and by the way smiled out from under it. I can't describe a baby girl any more than I describe a sunset or moonlight or any of the wonders of God—I can only say that she was everything that a baby girl should have been.

When she entered with her mother we all edged and crowded over but the pepper-and-salt man won. Down she sat close beside him. Then you should have seen that man, the foolish, old fellow. He turned toward her; he beamed; he mentally devoured her; he never took his eyes off her long enough to wink.

When she seemed about to turn her restlessly bobbing head toward him, his hands moved and the strong muscles of his face worked in excitement. Then, when she smiled his way and for an instant there was a flash of tiny, milk teeth, that man, the old silly, made the most dreadful facial contortion, something between a wink, a smile, a booh and a grimace.

Then when she turned from him he sat there eating her up. I saw him look reverently at her exquisite hands and at the awkward little legs sticking out straight ahead. When her mother arranged her ruffles he watched every move—absorbed. Then he would wait eager, hoping and praying for her to smile his way again...

Why, I was waiting for her smile too and so was every one of the staid and grown-up people in the car. I don't know when we would ever have come out from the spell of that ten-months-old baby girl if just then the conductor had not called out reproachfully—"Central Avenue—Central Avenue." Then the pepper-and-salt man jumped and looked nervously out and rushed for the door. I, myself, had to walk back two blocks and when I turned at my corner he was still going back to his street.

The Bay on Sunday Morning

Perhaps to go to Fort Mason on a sunny Sunday morning, that beautiful relaxed moment of the whole week, and there to sit with others who have no autos to go gallivanting in, and to sit idly gazing off at the bay. That's not bad. To read a little and doze a bit, but mostly to gaze out to sea and dream.

A big foreign steamer in port, perhaps a Scandinavian boat, inert, enormous, helpless, while the little tugs chatter, around it and finally get hold of it, and tug it slowly around with its nose pointing out to sea. Lumber schooners come in slowly and rhythmically, long and low and clean. The Vallejo boat, looking like a rocking horse, goes importantly chugging off toward Mare Island. It's hard to read a book with so going on out there.

Sunday morning, blessed play time, there is a fellow in a green canoe, and