Vignettes Of San Francisco | Page 4

playing baseball and calling the call of
Babe Ruth in sing-song Chinese. Then near them was an empty lot and
what do you suppose it was filled with? Scotch thistles, and edged with
wild corn flowers. Even Nature enters into the fun.
There is a story of an Italian who went through the streets somewhere
on Leavenworth, calling, "Nica fresha flowers," and from the opposite
side of the street a Chinaman with flowers would call, "Samee over

here." All went well until the Chinaman began to outsell the other,
when the Italian remonstrated. "Yella for yourself, see," he said, to
which the Chinaman answered, "Go to hellee," and went on as before.
This story was told to me by very reliable eye witnesses. The buff
cochin rooster and the huge negro and all the others I saw myself. And
many other strange things which I have not room to write, I saw in that
spot where Chinatown merges into the Latin quarter.

The Pepper and Salt Man

He was a man, I should say about sixty years old, a most uninteresting
age, and a homely, weather-beaten fellow too, when you stopped to
look at him. His suit was pepper-and-salt, and he was just like his suit.
Good as gold, I have no doubt, a roomer of whom his landlady could
say: "He comes and he goes and is never a speck of trouble."
Still, he might have been as good as Saint Anthony but no one would
ever have noticed him except for what happened. What happened
wasn't so much either but it was enough to illumine that dun,
common-place man so that everyone in the side-seating trolley was
suddenly aware of his presence. What happened was ten months old
and was a girl.
A regular girl, one hundred per cent feminine. One could tell just by the
way she wore her clothes, by her daintiness, by the tilt of her bonnet
and by the way smiled out from under it. I can't describe a baby girl any
more than I describe a sunset or moonlight or any of the wonders of
God - I can only say that she was everything that a baby girl should
have been.
When she entered with her mother we all edged and crowded over but
the pepper-and-salt man won. Down she sat close beside him. Then you
should have seen that man, the foolish, old fellow. He turned toward
her; he beamed; he mentally devoured her; he never took his eyes off

her long enough to wink.
When she seemed about to turn her restlessly bobbing head toward him,
his hands moved and the strong muscles of his face worked in
excitement. Then, when she smiled his way and for an instant there was
a flash of tiny, milk teeth, that man, the old silly, made the most
dreadful facial contortion, something between a wink, a smile, a booh
and a grimace.
Then when she turned from him he sat there eating her up. I saw him
look reverently at her exquisite hands and at the awkward little legs
sticking out straight ahead. When her mother arranged her ruffles he
watched every move - absorbed. Then he would wait eager, hoping and
praying for her to smile his way again. . .
Why, I was waiting for her smile too and so was every one of the staid
and grown-up people in the car. I don't know when we would ever have
come out from the spell of that ten-months-old baby girl if just then the
conductor had not called out reproachfully - "Central Avenue - Central
Avenue." Then the pepper-and-salt man jumped and looked nervously
out and rushed for the door. I, myself, had to walk back two blocks and
when I turned at my corner he was still going back to his street.

The Bay on Sunday Morning

Perhaps to go to Fort Mason on a sunny Sunday morning, that beautiful
relaxed moment of the whole week, and there to sit with others who
have no autos to go gallivanting in, and to sit idly gazing off at the bay.
That's not bad. To read a little and doze a bit, but mostly to gaze out to
sea and dream.
A big foreign steamer in port, perhaps a Scandinavian boat, inert,
enormous, helpless, while the little tugs chatter, around it and finally
get hold of it, and tug it slowly around with its nose pointing out to sea.
Lumber schooners come in slowly and rhythmically, long and low and

clean. The Vallejo boat, looking like a rocking horse, goes importantly
chugging off toward Mare Island. It's hard to read a book with so going
on out there.
Sunday morning, blessed play time, there is a fellow in a green canoe,