All very
pleasant except when the cogs in the cable slip, and you become part
and parcel of a promiscuous mix-up, all passengers tumbling over and
on to each other into the front end of the car, and if you are at the
bottom of the struggling heap, with your nose banged against the door,
and suffocating fat parties wedged on top of you, this rapid transit
slide is not quite so delightful as when you ride on the top of the
crowd.
Here you can get a good meal with a bottle of wine thrown in for
"two bits" (twenty-five cents), you can buy three different kinds of
newspapers for the same price as one, as they have no coins smaller
than a nickel. For a nickel you can ride for miles to the Cliff House
which is at the Golden Gate, where are acres of giant flowers of every
conceivable variety, all beautiful, but odorless; you watch the sea
lions nearly the size of oxen, and who roar and fight on the boulders.
Then we enter a bath-house, acres in extent, covered with glass, where
you can swim in sea water warmed by steam-pipes, listen to the band,
examine the multitude of wild animals and curiosities collected from
all parts of the world.
[Illustration: The Golden Gate of the Unpacified Pacific.]
Then we visit the city park of twelve hundred acres, once nothing but
flying sand. At first they planted on these dunes, grass roots from
South America; these fastened themselves to the sand and formed a
little soil; then were planted shrubs to stop the sand storms, then
trees, and now the real estate is not all in the air.
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