We conclude to go, to pass the time away, for we can easily get back in time to catch our train. So we get aboard the car, pay our nickel, and ride for several miles to a place called the Willows, which is the terminus of the road. Here is located an immense cherry orchard, where the crop is being gathered and crated ready for shipment to Eastern markets.
We are invited to help ourselves; it is half an hour before our car starts back and we have time to accept the invitation. The ripest cherries are the ones the packers reject, so we assisted the packers for several minutes picking out the ripe cherries and packing them while the packers packed the ones we didn’t pick. When we got tired of packing we quit picking, and thanking the good people for the treat, we board the car again and are soon spinning up the line among the apricot and cherry orchards, the trees loaded with fruit.
Arriving at our destination, we bid our friend, the conductor, goodbye, and in a few minutes we reach the much-inquired-for “narrow-gauge railroad station,” where we wait half an hour for the train. We find the track composed of three rails; and as though to demonstrate to us the use of the third rail, a freight train comes along made up of both narrow and broad-gauge cars. It looks odd, for it is something we had never seen before, and as the strange combination passes down the road the Colonel remarks, “There is nothing but what we may expect to see.”
In due time our train pulls into the station and we are soon seated in a comfortable narrow-gauge coach and speeding toward Oakland. There are many beautiful towns and residences located on this line, and as we draw nearer its termination this fact becomes more noticeable, the town of Alameda, through which we pass, possessing all the loveliness of a fairyland with its palatial residences and magnificent lawns.
Oakland, the “Athens of the Pacific,” is reached at last, and knowing how fascinating and grand it is and how royally our people are being treated, I am loath to leave; but our friends on the other side await our coming, and bidding the manager, the Colonel, and the ladies good night, Mr. Collom and I hie away to the ferry and across the bay, nor stop until we are seated in Mrs. Chambers’ cozy dining room, appeasing our appetites while recounting the incidents of the day. After dinner Willie took his mother, Mrs. Shaw, and myself out to give us a view of the city lights from “Park Heights.” A ride on the cable cars and several changes brought us in about forty minutes to the “Heights.”
From this high eminence we look down on a sight of unusual novelty and grandeur. Spread out far beneath us is almost the entire city of San Francisco, but the buildings are not visible, not one, only the millions of bright, star-like lights that enable you to trace the streets and mark the squares, and that twinkle and gleam from beneath like unto the gems that beam down upon you from above. We look up, through a cloudless atmosphere, and behold a firmament filled with brilliant, glittering gems; we look down, and see what almost seems a reflection of what we see above. Man, we know, is the author of all this grandeur that we see beneath, but as to the Author of that magnificence far above we can but speculate.
Willie sees we are growing serious and says we need a change, so he leads us around to the entrance that admits to the scenic railway, chutes, haunted swing, and skating rink, where for an hour we have a world of fun; so pleased are the ladies with the toboggan and the chutes that it is with difficulty we get them started home. We have had another full day, and when at eleven o’clock I find myself in bed, I discover that I am very tired. After the excitement and exertions of the day are over, when the tension and strain of over-taxed nerves and muscles relax and reaction comes, then you understand in its fullest measure the meaning of the expression, “I’m tired.”
SUNDAY, MAY 23d.
Feeling that we need rest, and finding the full enjoyment of our need in the pleasant home of Mrs. Chambers, we do not go out to-day until it is time to leave