Vignettes Of San Francisco | Page 9

about graft
expose. To almost anybody in the dead of night with burglars prowling
about, he is a friend to be called - in case one has a nickel handy.
But to the great army of women who are hopelessly respectable, the
policeman is something quite different. And what we women think of
the police is important. We pay taxes, we vote and we cross the street.
We like our policemen to be handsome and cavalier and, again I say,
the S. F. police are both. Any fine day they will make a funeral
procession out of the motor traffic to escort a nice woman across
Market street.
It goes without saying and is an unwritten law that policemen should be
Irish. I enjoy Greeks in classic literature or in restaurants, but not as
policemen. There is a saying in the city that when Greek meets Greek
they go together to get a job on the Market Street Railways. But when
they get upon the police force, I for one, shall move to the country.
Policemen should always be Irish.
And handsome. This is a woman's reason, but listen: O men, are they
not, I ask, a part of the civic beauty of the city? Is it not important that
these animated equestrian statues should be gallant men upon noble and
spirited horses? And who is more imperial in the pictorial life of the
city than the officer on the Lotta Fountain pedestal by the raising of
whose sceptered hand the life of the city moves or stays. Yes,
policemen should be handsome and gallant. It is written.

A Marine View

Russian Hill had always seemed economically remote to me as an
abiding place until recently I was invited out where some people were
living in a modest apartment with a good view of the bay. And when
they suggested that I try to get an apartment over there I decided to do
it.
It was a beautiful morning when I started out. There stood Russian Hill
and as Gibraltar bristles with armaments so it glittered with windows
facing the sea and one of them for me. Perhaps I could get a few rooms
from a nice Italian family and fix them up. Ah, the Latin quarter,
Greenwich village, the ghosts of artists haunting the place, Bohemians,
enthusiasm, the lust for adventure. I bristled with personality.
"Oh, you want a marine view," said the real estate man. "Not for that
price, lady."
A "marine view." I didn't want a marine view; I only wanted one
window facing the sea. Surely with all those windows - .
I left the real estate man and began wandering about. I asked a group of
Italian women and they exclaimed in a chorus "No marine views left." I
hadn't said a thing about a "marine view." I wandered further and it was
always the same. Some were smug and some were sorry but they all
spoke of a "marine view" in a certain tone of voice, as Boston people
say "Boston."
It was getting hot. I could not remove my coat because my waist was a
lace front. Only a hair net restrained me from utter frumpiness. Still I
was not altogether beaten and when I came to a nice countrified
looking house standing alone in the midst of modern art and a man
came out I asked him. The moment I did there came into his eyes a
hunted glitter and he told me how he had held out against them and
how he had been besieged for years to rent his marine view and
wouldn't.
As I turned away I met an Irish delivery man and he said that there

were dozens of vacant apartments very reasonable and waved his hand
vaguely in the direction where I'd been searching. I like the Irish but his
cheerful fibbery was the last straw and I went home.
The next day my friends called up and said that they had a marine view
for me. I was to live all summer in the apartment of the So-and-Sos
while they were away. So now I am. They are artistic and I drink my
coffee from saffron colored cups on a bay green table runner over a
black table under a turquoise blue ceiling with a view of the bay from
the window.
But I am humble and if some day I meet a hot, tired looking woman
who can't find an apartment on Russian Hill, I shall say: "Shucks, a
marine view isn't so much."

Hilly-Cum-Go

This is a story for children, because they will know it's only fooling,
while grown-up people will believe it's true.
The cable car isn't a car at all, children, but is a hilly-cum-go, a species
of rocking horse and