A crowd of passengers surged around us as the boat poked its nose into the slip. "There was nothing left of this part of the city but a fringe of wharves, after the fire." I bit the last word in two, for it was evident the expression was getting on his nerves. I was thankful that the clanging chains of the descending gang plank and the tramp of many feet made further conversation impossible.
"Hurry," he urged, "there's the Exposition car." We were in front of the Ferry Building and the crowd was jostling us in every direction.
"You surely are not going to the Exposition!" I exclaimed in mock surprise.
"Of course I am. Where else should we go?"
"But, my dear Antiquary, those buildings are only a few months old!"
He laughed good naturedly. "It ought to suit you Westerners, anyway," he retaliated. Then taking my arm, "Let us hurry! Look, the car is starting!"
"I am going to take the one behind," I announced. "There must be something old in San Francisco and I am going to find it."
"You'll have a long hunt," rejoined the skeptic, and with his eyes still on the tail of the disappearing Exposition car, he reluctantly followed me.
"Lots of strangers in San Francisco for the Fair," he remarked, as from the car window he watched the big turban of a Hindoo bobbing among the crowd on the sidewalk; then his eyes wandered to a Japanese arrayed in a new suit of American clothes and finally rested on a bright yellow lei wound about the hat of a swarthy Hawaiian. I smiled as I nodded to the Japanese who had worked in my kitchen for three years, and recognized in the dusky Hawaiian one of the regular singers in a popular café.
The train had now left commercial San Francisco behind and was climbing the hills to where the nature loving citizens had perched their houses in order to obtain a better view of the bay. We abandoned the car and following an upward path, finally stood on the lower shoulder of Twin Peaks. Tired from our exertions we sank upon the soft grass. The hills had put on their festival attire, catching up their emerald gowns with bunches of golden poppies and veiling their shoulders in filmy scarfs of blue lupins. The air was filled with Spring and the delicate blush of an apple-tree told of the approach of Summer. Below, the city, noisy and bustling a few moments ago, now lay hushed to quiet by the distance and beyond, the sun-flecked waters of the bay stretched to a girdle of verdant hills, up whose sides the houses of the towns were scrambling. To the left, resting on the top of Mt. Tamalpais, could be seen the "sleeping maiden" who for centuries had awaited the awakening kiss of her Indian lover.