two attempts at peripatetic computation, I gave it up. I am satisfied
that much enjoyment is lost to the world by this nervous anxiety to
improve our leisure moments, which, like the "shining hours" of Dr.
Watts, unfortunately offer the greatest facilities for idle pleasure. I
feel a profound pity for those misguided beings who are still impelled
to carry text-books with them in cars, omnibuses, and ferry-boats, and
who generally manage to defraud themselves of those intervals of rest
they most require. Nature must have her fallow moments, when she covers
her exhausted fields with flowers instead of grain. Deny her this, and
the next crop suffers for it. I offer this axiom as some apology for
obtruding upon the reader a few of the speculations which have engaged
my mind during these daily perambulations.

Few Californians know how to lounge gracefully. Business habits, and a
deference to the custom, even with those who have no business, give an
air of restless anxiety to every pedestrian. The exceptions to this rule
are apt to go to the other extreme, and wear a defiant, obtrusive kind
of indolence which suggests quite as much inward disquiet and unrest.
The shiftless lassitude of a gambler can never be mistaken for the
lounge of a gentleman. Even the brokers who loiter upon Montgomery
Street at high noon are not loungers. Look at them closely and you will
see a feverishness and anxiety under the mask of listlessness. They do
not lounge--they lie in wait. No surer sign, I imagine, of our peculiar
civilization can be found than this lack of repose in its constituent
elements. You cannot keep Californians quiet even in their amusements.
They dodge in and out of the theatre, opera, and lecture-room; they
prefer the street cars to walking because they think they get along
faster. The difference of locomotion between Broadway, New York, and
Montgomery Street, San Francisco, is a comparative view of Eastern and
Western civilization.