Page:The city that was; a requiem of old San Francisco (IA citythatwasrequi00irwi).djvu/13

 THE CITY THAT WAS

'I'd rather be a busted lamp post on Battery Street, San Francisco, than the Waldorf-Astoria."

—Willie Britt.

HE old San Francisco is dead. The gayest, lightest hearted, most pleasure loving city of the western continent, and in many ways the most interesting and romantic, is a horde of refugees living among ruins. It may rebuild; it probably will; but those who have known that peculiar city by the Golden Gate, have caught its flavor of the Arabian Nights, feel that it can never be the same. It is as though a pretty, frivolous woman had passed through a great tragedy. She survives, but she is sobered and different. If it rises out of the ashes it must be a [7]