Round the World | Page 5

good dinner with agreeable company, were shown as much of the city
as it was possible to see before the "wee short hour ayont the twal'."
* * * * *
PALACE HOTEL, SAN FRANCISCO, Wednesday Evening, October
23.
A palace truly! Where shall we find its equal? Windsor Hotel,
good-bye! you must yield the palm to your great Western rival, as far
as structure goes, though in all other respects you may keep the
foremost place. There is no other hotel building in the world equal to
this. The court of the Grand at Paris is poor compared to that of the
Palace. Its general effect at night, when brilliantly lighted, is superb; its
furniture, rooms and appointments are all fine, but then it tells you all
over it was built to "whip all creation," and the millions of its lucky
owner enabled him to triumph. It is as much in place in San Francisco
as the Taj would be in Sligo; but then your California operator, when
he has made a "pile," goes in for a hotel, just as in New York one takes
to a marble palace or a grand railway depot, or in Cincinnati to a music
hall, or in Pittsburgh to building a church or another rolling mill. Every
community has its social idiosyncrasies, but it struck us as rather an
amusing coincidence that while we had recently greeted no less a man
than Potter Palmer, Esq., behind the counter in Chicago as "mine host
of the Garter," we should so soon have found ourselves in the keeping

of Senator Sharon, lessee of the Palace. These hotels do not impress
one as being quite suitable monuments for one who naturally considers
his labors about over when he builds, as they are apt apparently to
prove rather lively for comfort to the owners, and we have decided
when our building time comes that it shall not be in the hotel line. We
got to bed at last, but who could sleep after such a day--after such a
week! The ceaseless motion, with the click, click, click of the
wheels--our sweet lullaby apparently this had become--was wanting;
and then the telegrams from home, which bade us Godspeed, the warm,
balmy air of Italy, when we had left winter behind--all this drove sleep
away; and when drowsiness came, what apparitions of Japanese,
Chinese, Indians, elephants, camels, josses! passed through our brain in
endless procession. We were at the Golden Gate; we had just reached
the edge of the Pacific Ocean, and before us lay
... "the wealth of Ormus and of Ind, Or where the gorgeous East, with
richest hand, Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold.
To every blink the livelong night there came this refrain, which seemed
to close each scene of Oriental magnificence that haunted the
imagination:
"And our gude ship sails ye morn, And our gude ship sails ye morn."
Do what I would, the words of the old Scotch ballad would not down.
Sleep! who could sleep in such an hour? Dead must be the man whose
pulse beats not quicker, and whose enthusiasm is not enkindled when
for the first time he is privileged to whisper to himself, The East! the
East!
"And our gude ship sails ye morn."
* * * * *
HARBOR OF SAN FRANCISCO, Thursday, October 24.
At last! noon, 24th, and there she lies--the Belgic at her dock! What a
crowd! but not of us; eight hundred Chinamen are to return to the
Flowery Land. One looks like another; but how quiet they are! Are they
happy? overjoyed at being homeward bound? We cannot judge. Those
sphinx-like, copper-colored faces tell us no tales. We had asked a
question last night by telegraph, and here is the reply brought to us on
the deck. It ends with a tender good-bye. How near and yet how far!
but even if the message had sought us out at the Antipodes, its power to
warm the heart with the sense of the near presence and companionship

of those we love would only have been enhanced. In this we seem
almost to have reached the dream of the Swedish seer, who tells us that
thought brings presence, annihilating space in heaven.
We start promptly at noon. Our ship is deeply laden with flour, which
China needs in consequence of the famine prevailing in its northern
provinces, not owing to a failure of the rice, as I had understood, but of
the millet, which is used by the poor instead of rice. Some writers
estimate that five millions of people must die from starvation before the
next crop can be gathered; but this seems incredible. And now America
comes to the rescue, so that at this moment, while from its Eastern
shores it pours