Page:The Tourist's California by Wood, Ruth Kedzie.djvu/68

48 abstracted a quill from the porcupine globe at her elbow and strolled, at peace with the world, to the chess table and a waiting crony.

Now, alack, there too often sits in Madame's place, a money changer, impersonal and blonde, whose registering bell tolls the passing of old-time San Francisco.

Down on Broadway are Italian basements and their mellifluous menus which afford a good meal for 50 cents. On Market Street, familiar names invite entrance to new-gilded portals. One climbs the clean stairs of rebuilt Chinatown to drink tea brewed in glazed bowls, to crush the bossed shell of the lichee nut and prod with a two-tined fork sugared roots and the rind of the melon. Or one dawdles over a pilaf on a tilting balcony beneath a red and yellow flag.

The diverse nationality, the number and average excellence of the city's 800 restaurants bear witness to the inbred fondness of the San Francisco family for dining out. Celestial, French and Italian, Swiss, Spanish and German art is exercised in the preparation of California's abundant produce.

Cabrillo's high-decked vessels have a replica in the ship cafe at Venice, the beautiful sea resort near Los Angeles whose sponsor is Albert Kinney, friend of Helen Hunt and builder of dreams. It was his thought to moor by the sea-wall this white