Chicago offers great opportunity to a student of religious, industrial and social conditions, and when, by chance, I secured employment in a leading warehouse, a very good paying position, under the circumstances, I devoted all my spare time visiting the Greek quarters, incognito, and studying everything that came within my observation, and attending all kinds of public meetings of various denominations and societies, which proved a great help to me in learning the proper pronunciation of the English words, in fact for five years I did not speak five times in the Greek language.
One morning I read in the paper the following announcement: "The Knights Templar of the United States have made their plans to celebrate the 29th triennial conclave of Knights Templar to be held in San Francisco, Cal., September 4 to 9. The occasion will be of universal character, representatives from all the world; and Great Britain will send to this imposing ceremony the highest officials that control the affairs of the chivalric order of Freemasonry in the British Isles. The Earl of Euston, most eminent and supreme grand master of great priory of England and Wales and the dependencies of the British crown, were coming with credentials to represent Edward VII, the king of England." I was looking forward to my visit to California, since I left New York, but I never expected the time for me to go there would come so soon as it did. I was longing to see a great gathering of Freemasons, of this class of men, that, in every country represents the highest ideals of good citizenship.
With a few days preliminary preparations, I bade good-bye to my employer, and well supplied with recommendations from some influential friends and acquaintances which I had made in Chicago, I saw myself off to California, on the forenoon train, the 25th of June, 1904.
The trip was uneventful, excepting the unbearable heat and dust, especially going through the States of Oklahoma, Arizona and New Mexico, and the number of Indians, which, for the first time in my life I beheld in their own skin living and moving contented as though they still were the dominating race on the continent, with their square faces painted in various colors, wrapped in their blankets, and bare-footed, their feet being very much like those of a mud turtle, they were the real thing.
CHAPTER VIII
Honorable Submission
There was a time when the Eastern part of the United States looked upon San Francisco as the coming New York of the Pacific Coast, but since the disastrous earthquake in the year 1906, the stream of progress as a great commercial center has been turned rather towards the Northern Pacific Coast, yet San Francisco with its great harbor, the ever increasing commercial developments and number of other advantages, still is a magnificent attraction to the homeseeker, who for the last few years has been very sceptical in his preference on account of existing unfavorable conditions regarding the city's government which is the prey of dishonest politicians. For this and many other reasons I should never make my home within the limits of the city of San Francisco. There are beautiful localities within short distances, desirable in every respect and beyond the claws of the city hall of San Francisco.
Mount Tamalpais, I believe, is a most pleasant location for the lovers of nature. Words fail, and it is beyond the ability of my pen, to even attempt to describe, the beauties which nature has bestowed upon the Mount of Tamalpais. Situated just across the bay of San Francisco, by the way of Socialito, on the train to Mill Valley and whence on the crookedest railroad in the world, climbing 2000 feet above the tide of water, we reach the lower top of the mountain, and there we find accommodations to entertain kings and princesses, and the most eccentric Yankee. Yet, I am assured, that scarcely one-tenth of the visitors to California, have ever had the exceptional privilege to spend 24 hours, on the top of Mount Tamalpais, and thereafter all through their lives enjoy the most wonderful recollection in all God's creation.
The Alps in Europe are too stupendous to be compared with this majestically magnificent mount of Tamalpais. The Himalaya in Asia are too brutish to be considered as a rival of this gentle and illustrious sky-scraper. The Olympus and Parnassus of Greece are out of season to be paralleled with this up-to-date marvelous throne of their Majesties the Kings of America. There is the Tamalpais Hotel, a real palace, where the guests can rest and from the verandas or the windows of their own rooms observe the animating sights on the left hand side the snow-covered top-heads of the mountains and following to the right look down upon the valleys and behold the myriads of orange and lemon and all the fruit-bearing trees blooming all the year around and decorated like brides in their wedding procession, not only for a few moments, till the law ties the knot, but forever as long as the life-giving climate of beautiful California lasts and time shall be no more.
When I went up to the Mountain, looking for employment, because I wanted to locate myself in such a place, if I could, till the celebration of the Knights Templar was over, I was surprised to find that the General Manager of the Hotel and the R. R. Station was a lady, of a striking majestical appearance, she was the controlling power of the whole business on Mount Tamalpais, and she was not a suffragette either. But she was a loving mother of two beautiful children, a typical Yankee girl, well up in her teens, supervising over the chambermaids, and variously assisting her mother, and an active boy of sixteen, the good-fellow of everybody, and especially to the Chinamen employed in the kitchen. Mr. Johnson was the husband and father of this happy family, and he occupied the position of butler of the house, receiving orders from his beloved wife.