Fascinating San Francisco

Produced by David A. Schwan <davidsch@earthlink.net>
Fascinating San Francisco
O Warder of Two Continents! —Bret Harte
San Francisco
1924
Foreword
Enthroned on hills, San Francisco captivates the stranger who sees it from the Bay by the vivacity of its landscape long before revealing any of its intimate lures. Whether you approach in the early morning, when gulls arc wheeling above the palette of tones of the Bay, or at night, when illuminated ferryboats glide by like the yellow-bannered halls of fable, the buoyancy of San Francisco is manifest.
It increases as you pass through the Ferry Building, the turnstile behind the Golden Gate, whose blithe tower of the four clock dials is reminiscent of the Giralda in Seville.
In another moment you are in the surge of Market street, the long bazaar and highroad of this port of all flags. An invisible presence dances before your footsteps as you sense the animation of the street. It is the spirit of San Francisco, weaving its debonair spell.
Here Tetrazzini turns street singer and Jan Kubelik is a wandering minstrel enchanting crowds at Lotta's Fountain under Christmas eve stars.
From Dana to Stevenson, from Harte to Mencken, San Francisco has captured the hearts of a train of illustrious admirers. Rudyard Kipling, master of the terse, has tooled a brisk drypoint of the city in a few strokes. San Francisco has only one drawback, he writes. 'Tis hard to leave.
Cradled as a drowsy Spanish pueblo, reared as a child of the mines, and fed on all the exhilarants of the gold-spangled days of the Argonauts, San Francisco is like a dashing Western beauty with the eyes of an exotic ancestry.