He asks no
favors. He seeks no friends. All unmindful is he of the tattle
that a veiled lady of elegant appearance sometimes walks under the
leafy bowers shading his lovely home.
The excitable populace find new food for gossip. There are more
residences than one in San Francisco, where dreamy luxury is hidden
within the unromantic wooden boxes called residences.
Fair faces gleam out furtively from these casements. At open doors,
across whose thresholds no woman of position ever sets a foot,
wealth stands on guard. Silence seals the portals. The vassals of
gold wait in velvet slippers. The laws of possession are enforced
by the dangers of any trespass on these Western harems.
While the queen city of the West rises rapidly it is only a modern
Babylon on the hills of the bay. The influx augments all classes.
Every element of present and future usefulness slowly makes headway
against the current of mere adventure. Natural obstacles yield
to patient, honest industry. California begins in grains, fruits,
and all the rich returns of nature, to show that Ceres, Flora, and
Pomona are a trinity of witching good fairies. They beckon to the
world to wander hither, and rest under these blue-vaulted balmy
skies.
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