we had enjoyed a pleasant and profitable trip.




CHAPTER XXX.

"A man he seems of cheerful yesterdays,
And confident to-morrows."


We made a trip to San Francisco at a time when life seemed a continued
carnival season, for there winter is the most delightful portion of the
year. We rented apartments in a delightful New England family, named
Collins. This, at that time, was the most comfortable way of living, for
in no part of the United States did restaurants furnish such good and
liberal fare at such reasonable rates. The characteristic cheerfulness of
California became intensified in San Francisco, where every face looked
radiant and happy as if all who entered the Golden Gate found a City of
the Sun.

We had so often asked the reason of this, and were as often told that "it
was all owing to the climate." We finally concluded that the climate
carried an unusual weight of responsibility; indeed, according to Joaquin
Miller, among "the first families of the Sierras," every unusual
phenomenon of nature, whether it came in the form of a fascinating widow,
a spooney man, a premature birth, or a fish with gold in its stomach, was
all owing to "this glorious climate of Californy."

Although San Francisco is pervaded by the business activity of a great