"There is not a city in all the world except San Francisco which could have done such a thing," enthusiastically rejoined my companion, but the next instant the eccentricities of the place struck him afresh.
"Furs and apple blossoms!" he exclaimed, observing a woman opposite. "What a ridiculous combination!" Then, turning, he scrutinized me from the top of my flower-trimmed hat to the bottom of my full skirt until my cheeks burned with embarrassment. "Why, you have on a thin summer silk, while that woman is dressed for mid-winter!"
"Of course," I assented. "She's on the shady side of the street."
But still his face did not lighten. "We've been in the sun all morning," I continued to explain. "People talk about San Francisco being an expensive place to live in, but really it is the cheapest in the world. If a woman has a handsome set of furs, she wears them and keeps in the shadow, or if her new spring suit has just come home, she puts that on and walks on the sunny side of the street, being comfortably and appropriately, dressed in either."
"Great heavens!" he cried, "what a city!"
We passed through the shopping district and lingered for a moment at the edge of Portsmouth Square. My eyes rested affectionately on the clean-cut lawns and blossoming shrubs. Then I turned to the skeptic, but before I could speak, he had dismissed it with a nod.
"Too modern," he commented. "Looks as if it had been planted yesterday. Now the Boston Common--"
A rasping discordant sound burst from a near-by store and the Easterner sent me a questioning glance.
"A Chinese orchestra," I replied. "We are in Oriental San Francisco."
"That park was doubtless made as a breathing place for this congested Chinese quarter," he glanced back at the green square. "A good civic improvement."
"That park is a relic of old Spanish days and one of the most historic spots in San Francisco," I said severely.
He stopped short. "You don't mean--I didn't suppose there was anything old in commercial San Francisco."
"Portsmouth Square was once the Plaza of the little Spanish town of Yerba Buena, and the public meeting place of the community when there were not half a dozen houses in San Francisco."
"Let's go back." He wheeled about abruptly and started in the direction of the square, but I protested.