a group, equally pretty, of ladies in waiting. When the deep,
cylindrical cistern-like reservoir on Twin Peaks was finished, they
opened it with a dance; when the Stockton street tunnel was finished,
they opened it with a dance; when the morgue was completed they opened
that with a reception.

The San Francisco papers reflect all this activity, and they certainly
make entertaining reading. For one thing, the annual crop of pretty
girls being ten times as large there as anywhere else, and photography
being universally a fine art, the papers are filled with pictures of
beautiful women. They are the only papers I have ever seen in which the
faces that appear on the theatrical page pale beside those that
accompany the news stories. The last three months of my stay in San
Francisco I cut out all the pictures of pretty girls from three
newspapers. They included all kinds of women - society, club, athletic,
college, highbrow, low-brow; highway-women, burglaresses, forgeresses
and murderesses. I have just counted those pictures three hundred and
fifty-four - and all beautiful. When I received my paper in the morning
- until the war made that function, even in California, a melancholy one
- I used to look first at the pictures of the women. Then always I
turned to the sporting page to see what record had been broken since
yesterday and, if it were Saturday morning (I confess it without shame),
to read the joyous account of Friday night's boxing contest. And, always
before I settled to the important news of the day, I read the last
"stunt".

Picturesque "stunts" are always being pulled off in San Francisco. Was
it the late lamented Beachey flying with a pretty girl around the
half-completed Tower of Jewels, was it a pretty actress selling roses at
the Lotta Fountain for the benefit of the Belgians, it was something