cits. and
the millionaires. I don't. I cant afford that. But they occasionally
entertain me. And I as often entertain them. So many restaurants here
are both inexpensive and good that I can return their hospitality
self-respectingly and without undue expense. In New York I would not
only never meet that type of man, but I could not afford to entertain
him if I did."
Allied to this, perhaps, is a quality, typical of San Francisco, which I
can describe only as promiscuity. That promiscuity is in its best phase
a frankness; a fearlessness; a gorgeous candor which made possible the
epigram that San Francisco has every vice but hypocrisy. Civically, two
cross currents cut through the city's life; one of, a high visioned
enlightenment which astounds the visiting stranger by its force, its
white-fire enthusiasm; the other a black sordidness and soddenness which
displays but one redeeming quality - the characteristic San Franciscan
candor. That openness is physical as well as spiritual. The city,
dropped over its many hills like a great loose cobweb weighted thickly
with the pearl cubes of buildings, with its wide streets; its frequent
parks; its broad-spaced residential areas; its gardened houses in which
high windows crystallize every view and sun parlors or sleeping porches
catch both the first and last hint of daylight - the city itself has the
effect of living in the open.
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