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312 An association comprising in a genial way most of the best elements of San Francisco is the Bohemian Club. It is found taking a very creditable interest in literature and the arts—it numbering the professionals and amateurs in these branches in its membership—and entertains and welcomes distinguished strangers. A monthly entertainment of a light, composite character is held, known as a "Jinks." The grand festival of the year, however, is a "High Jinks," which takes the form of an excursion into the country. The principal ceremonial of the High Jinks has sometimes been held at night, in masquerade costume, among the Big Trees, the enormous redwoods of Sonoma County, to the northward. It may well be believed that the doings on these occasions are as fantastic and amusing as the merry inventions of a couple of hundred bright social spirits can make them.

A population of three hundred thousand souls is not extraordinary now, as populations go, but there are certain things which make San Francisco cosmopolitan beyond its actual size. An entirely new commercial situation gives rise to a new milieu. San Francisco faces toward Asia, the great English-speaking colonies of Oceanica, and the islands of the sea, as New York faces Europe. It enjoys already a trade with the Orient amounting to ten millions per annum in imports and eight millions in exports. The possibilities of this trade, extended among the teeming populations in the cradle of the human race, seem almost limitless. A way will be found sooner or later out of the imbroglio into which our inexperience has plunged us on the Chinese question, and communication will flow unimpeded. In countries sepa-