barren waste of shifting sands?

While I am speaking of the reception in the Hopkins' Art Institute, I
may note that Californians have a great love for art. Their own grand
scenery of mountain and valley and ocean fosters the love for the
beautiful; and to-day they can point with pride to the works of such
men as Julian Rix, Charles Dickman, H.J. Bloomer, J.M. Gamble, and
H. Breuer, whose landscapes are eagerly sought for, and command high
prices. The frequent sales of paintings are the best evidence that the
people of San Francisco equal the citizens of the oldest cities of the
land in refinement and the elevation of the mind and heart above the
mere desire to make money. There is also a goodly array of female
artists who deserve praise and honour. Eastern cities must look well
to their laurels in the matter of art as well as in many other things.
The contrast between 1849 and 1901 in the prices paid for articles
of consumption and service rendered is quite remarkable. When Bayard
Taylor visited San Francisco in 1849 he paid the sum of two dollars
to a Mexican porter to carry his trunk from the ship to the Plaza or
Portsmouth Square. Here in an adobe building, he tells us, he had his
lodging. His bed, in a loft, and his three meals per day, consisting
of beefsteak, bread and coffee, cost him thirty-five dollars a week.
From other sources we learn that, if you kept house, you had to pay
fifty cents per pound for potatoes,--one might weigh a pound. Apples
were sold at fifty cents a piece, dried apples at seventy-five cents a
pound. Fresh beef cost fifty cents a pound, milk was a dollar a quart,
hens brought six dollars a piece, eggs nine dollars a dozen, and
butter brought down from Oregon, was sold at the rate of two dollars
and fifty cents per pound. Flour was in demand at fifty dollars a
barrel, and a basket of greens would readily bring eight dollars. A
cow cost two hundred dollars. A tin coffee pot was worth five dollars,