A Little Girl in Old San Francisco

by Amanda M. Douglas

"Olive blows hot and cold. She takes up a girl with a certain vehement preference and for a while can think of no one else. Then she finds her friend has some faults, or fails in two or three points, and she is on with a new admiration. Girls are crude, funny creatures! Do you suppose we were like them?" she questioned with laughing, disavowing eyes.

"No, we were not," returned Marian. "Times have changed. Life and its demands have changed. We were taught to sew, to darn, to do fine needlework; here a Mexican or a Spanish woman will do the most exquisite work for a trifle. Every country lays its treasures at our feet; it would be folly to spin and to weave. And there is money to buy everything with. How careful we were of a bit of lace that our grandmother had! The women of the street flaunt in yards and yards of it, handsomer than we could ever have achieved. We are on the other side of the country, and are topsy-turvy. We have begun at the big end of everything. Whether we are to come out at the little end——" and she paused, her eyes indecisive in their expression.

"Would you like to go back?"

"I'd like to see dear old, proper Boston, and really feel how much we had changed. But the breadth and freedom here are fascinating. It has not the hardships of new settlers. Even the men who sleep out on the foothills with the blue sky for covering may be rich six months hence, and putting up fine buildings. And when you come to that there is no lack of intelligence. Haven't we some of the best brain and blood of the East, as well as some of the worst? Our papers are teeming with news, with plans, with business schemes, that would craze an Eastern man. No, I do not believe I should be satisfied to take up the old life there again."

"And now I must consider my daughter's entrée into society. Think of the mothers in the old novels, who took their daughters to Bath or to London, and looked over the list of eligibles and made two or three selections. Our young women will select for themselves in a half-mercenary fashion, and one can't altogether blame them. Poverty is not an attractive subject."

Miss Holmes was out for a little shopping expedition, and went in her friend's carriage. Every year saw great changes. Fire destroyed only to have something grander rise from the ashes. There was already an imposing line of stores, and a display of fabrics that roused envy and heart-burning. Where there had been one-story shanties filled with the miscellany of a country store, only a few years ago, now all things were systematized and compared well with some Eastern towns, not as much, but certainly as great a variety. It had taken San Francisco only a few years to grow up. She sprang from childhood to full stature.

Then one drove round the Plaza to Russ's, mingling in the gay cavalcade until a stranger might have considered it a gala day of some sort. Then to Winn's for luncheon, tickets, perhaps, to the theatre where Laura Keene was drawing full houses of better-class people.

The little girl was not in much of this. She went to school regularly; she found some very congenial friends. She never could tell how much she liked Olive, and she was accustomed to be taken up with fervor and then dropped with a suddenness that might have dislocated most regards, and would if she had set her heart on Olive. She had a serene sort of temperament not easily ruffled; she had brought that from Maine with her. She talked over her lessons with Uncle Jason, who seemed to know so many things, more she thought than Miss Holmes, though she had taught school in Boston.

She had a host of squirrel friends now, though Snippy was amusingly jealous, and at times drove the others off. There were flocks of birds, too, who would hop up close or circle round her and occasionally light on her shoulder, and sing deafeningly in her ear, trills and roulades, such as Mam'selle played on the piano—she was not so fond of the organ, it was fit only for church and convents in the Frenchwoman's estimation.

It was funny to see Balder follow her about. During the rainy season he found so many puddles in which to stop and rest and disport himself, but in the dry times they filled a tub for him, and he was content. Pablo caught fish for him, and it was his opinion that Balder lived like some grand Señor. She never tired of the flowers, and was always finding stray nooks where they bloomed. She and Miss Holmes often went over to the ocean and sat on the rocks, looking, wondering.