Page:The Tourist's California by Wood, Ruth Kedzie.djvu/135

 SAN FRANCISCO 107 careening galleon which stands on Portsmouth Square " To Remember Robert Louis Stevenson." His creed, " to be honest, to be kind, to earn a lit- tle, to spend a little less ... to keep a few friends, but these without capitulation . . ." is cut above and around a dribbling spigot. It were not meet that a memorial to Humanity's Brother should convey no service. The forum of old San Francisco is at the gate of the vanished Chinatown, and of the new. The region of which Dupont Street is the vertebra was* once the seat of Wealth and Fashion. When Fashion moved to the hills, the Chinese, who first came to San Francisco at the time when all the world was rushing thither, possessed themselves of the fantastic frame houses, and shrouded their scroll-work and pinnacles with Oriental subtleties that made of this street of fallen glory a bit of Canton. The fire dispossessed the yellow men. San Fran- cisco said they should not return. But Oriental tenacity won. Dupont Street is still the Broad- way of Chinatown. The new quarter glimmers with electric lights and boasts sanitary passage- ways. Pagoda towers adorn fire-proof blocks which the subtlest art cannot beautify until fog and smoke have wiped their face with gentle hand, until the ribbed globes of paper lanterns, the tat- tered bulletins of the Tongs and gala banners