I could not help reasoning, besides, that the more
natural course was to approach the principal by the
road of his agent's office; and there weighed upon my
spirits a conviction that we were already too late, and
that the man was gone two hours ago. Once more, then,
I held my peace; and after an exchange of words at the
telephone to assure ourselves he was at home, we set
out for the attorney's office.
The endless streets of any American city pass, from one
end to another, through strange degrees and
vicissitudes of splendour and distress, running under
the same name between monumental warehouses, the dens
and taverns of thieves, and the sward and shrubbery of
villas. In San Francisco the sharp inequalities of the
ground, and the sea bordering on so many sides, greatly
exaggerate these contrasts. The street for which we
were now bound took its rise among blowing sands,
somewhere in view of the Lone Mountain Cemetery; ran
for a term across that rather windy Olympus of Nob
Hill, or perhaps just skirted its frontier; passed
almost immediately after through a stage of little
houses, rather impudently painted, and offering to the
eye of the observer this diagnostic peculiarity, that
the huge brass plates upon the small and highly-
coloured doors bore only the first names of ladies--
Norah or Lily or Florence; traversed China Town, where
it was doubtless undermined with opium cellars, and its
blocks pierced, after the similitude of rabbit-warrens,
with a hundred doors and passages and galleries;
enjoyed a glimpse of high publicity at the corner of
Kearney; and proceeded, among dives and warehouses,
towards the City Front and the region of the water-
rats.
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