—Longfellow.
“There ain’t nothing like fresh air and the smell of the woods. There’s always a smell from trees dead, or living, and the air is better where the woods be.”
CHAPTER XIII
SAN FRANCISCO
The Pacific slope has a wonderful flora which has been but little studied. Here wonderful ferns and laurels grow the whole year round. With few exceptions all the plants are new and strange. One of the most beautiful trees on the coast is the madrona, graceful and stately, its red trunk contrasting oddly with its green foliage. The dandelion is here but puts on such airs and graces that unless you are quite familiar with him you would never take him for the common weed he is at home. He grows several in a cluster on a delicate stem twelve to fifteen inches long. He is the pale yellow of California gold. His white head when he goes to seed is more frowsy than with us, and the seeds are a little different in shape, but he wings himself over onto people’s lawns with the agility and grace of his Illinois brother.
There are many points of interest in San Francisco and not the least of these is China Town, which has a population of thirty thousand people. A Chinese school is a place of interest. The boys (girls are not sent to school in China Town) stand at long tables running across the room. The pupils all study aloud. Besides their books each pupil is provided with a small camel’s hair brush and a pot of ink with which he writes out his lessons in the characters of his native language. The paper used is very red, while the ink is very black. This is a priest’s school and these little almond-eyed Orientals in their quaint caps and gowns are all studying for the priesthood. They laugh and whisper too, when the teacher’s attention is engaged elsewhere, just like American children. One boy painted a Chinese character on another’s face, then they all laughed and the first boy wiped it angrily off. The teacher had not seen it, so no one was punished. The teacher, a fine looking man in the native dress of his country, with a few strokes of his brush painted for us on red paper an advertisement of his school. Teacher and pupils bowed a good morning as we departed.
STREET SCENE IN CHINATOWN, SAN FRANCISCO.
At the Christian Mission the Chinese minister, a man of much intelligence, greeted us cordially, asking where we were from. He knew where Chicago was and something about it. He was sorry that the services were over and asked us to come again next Sunday at ten o’clock.
The tea house, which is the club room, is the finest oriental club house in America. The beautiful tables and chairs are all inlaid with marble and pearl.