Page:The city that was; a requiem of old San Francisco (IA citythatwasrequi00irwi).djvu/44

THE CITY THAT WAS part their pleasures were simple, inexpensive and out o£ doors. No people were fonder of expeditions into the country, of picnics—which might be brought off at almost any season of the year—and of long tours in the great mountains and forests.

Hospitality was nearly a vice. As in the early mining days, if they liked the stranger the people took him in. At the first meeting the San Francisco man had him put up at the club; at the second, he invited him home to dinner. As long as the stranger stayed he was being invited to week end parties at ranches, to little dinners in this or that restaurant and to the houses of his new acquaintances, until his engagements grew beyond hope of fulfilment. Perhaps there was rather too much of this kind of thing. At the end of a fortnight a visitor with a pleasant smile and a good story left the place a wreck. This [38]