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The McKinley Memorial, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. The hospital of the Southern Pacific Company

is shown in the background.

chored there, as well as a steamer just in from the Hawaiian Isles.

They noted the picture the steamship made, with its dark brown hull, its white upper works, and its yellow spars and stacks. The health officer's

boat lay alongside, but presently they saw it move away. Immediately a cloud of light gray smoke floated from the steamer's funnel, as it prepared to up-anchor.

Farther out, white ferry steamers

were plying north and south. Each trailed a broad white ribbon of foam. In the distance an ocean tramp was steering up the bay. They noted its long black side and scarlet stack and lazy plume of smoke.

Directly in the line in which they looked, a little island rose from the crisp green water. Its steep sides were crowned with the white walls of the Federal prison and the shaft of a lighthouse. And directly beyond that they saw the broad green slopes of a much larger island, and beyond that the hills of the mainland, melting away into the purple distance; and above. those hills there hung in the blue a long white roll of cumulus clouds.

The picture afforded such a combination of golden sunshine and green water, of yellow beach and emerald islands, of moving vessels and purple hills and blue sky and floating clouds, that it seemed like an artist's dream. "Some pictures, eh?" asked Chill. "I guess yes," answered Cuttle. Cuttle's gaze returned from exploring the horizon. Now he noted the steep descent of the pavement below him. The concrete sidewalk had been pitted deeply, so as to afford a foothold. But even then it didn't look any too promising. He doubted whether he could make the descent without slipping, unless he should wear rubbersoled shoes.

Just then a San Franciscan approached and looked down the slope. He contemplated the sidewalk for a minute, but he didn't seem to like it. Then he turned to the cobbles, and shuffling sidewise, commenced a gingerly crablike descent. As Cuttle watched him, he decided that they had come to the steepest place of all. On their right, as the two friends stood looking down the hill, there rose a high bank of yellow clay and rock. A rough flight of wooden steps led to the top.

"Wouldn't the view up there be better?" asked Cuttle.

"It would be more comprehensive," answered Chill. "The view where we are is like that through the window of

a house, while the view up there is like the one to be had from the roof."

"The roof for me," answered Cuttle, and they climbed the stairs.

But, when they stood at the top, the improvement was only in quantity and not in quality. It's true they could see all around them now, except to the south. The view was no longer confined to the north. But the picture contained such a mass of detail as to be rather bewildering and unsatisfactory. The eye saw everything and settled on nothing.

For a quarter of an hour they sat on the edge of a little wooden platform, for it made a comfortable resting place. Then they descended the steps and returned to Taylor street.

But Chill had one more card to play, one more bit of local color with which he proposed to silence Cuttle's doubts. As they walked along, on their way to a car line, he stopped his friend and asked him to look back at an apartment house which they had passed a minute before.

It rose against a hillside which was as steep as any of those down which they had looked, and its architecture had been specially adapted to its location. It ascended the hillside in a series of gigantic steps.

With walls of gray concrete and arched entrances and square, deepsunk windows, it climbed the hill in a series of terraces. Gallery rose behind gallery, each overlooking the one next below, and all were adorned with the red and green of growing flowers. A blaze of scarlet geraniums glowed on the very roof. The whole place looked like the dream of a futurist, and yet was purely a product of local conditions.

"Have you anything like that in New York?" asked Chill.

And Cuttle had nothing to say.

It was two weeks later. Mr. Kenneth Cuttle, eastward bound, was crossing San Francisco Bay. He stood on the after deck, and watched the seagulls wheeling and whirling in the

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In the Chinese quarter, where numbers of buildings were given a semi-pagoda character, after the fire.

wake of the ferry boat. Beyond them he saw the heights of the city dwindle in the distance, and he recollected a stanza he had seen in a daily paper that morning:

"Sea gulls about me, and before me lessening

A city set on hills, its shining streets

Fresh washed with rain, and golden at its back

The sweet and gracious sun that seeks its rest."

"In four days I shall be in New York," he soliloquized. "Well, I shall be able to tell them San Francisco still has local color."

T

His First Client

By Edith Hecht

HERE was pride in the house of Armstrong when Harold was admitted to the bar. The fatted calf, figuratively speaking, was not only killed, but also prepared with infinite gusto; for no member of the household was prouder of the newlyfledged lawyer than Wong, the Chinese cook.

He had been over thirty years in the Armstrong family, and had dandled them all on his knee; but Harold, of course, the youngest of the family, and the only man child, was Wong's idol; and Wong had surpassed himself on to-night's dinner in honor of the new attorney.

He had cooked nothing but Harold's favorites, of course, on this momentous occasion, and had fairly outdone himself. A very proud and happy family gathering it was, all absorbed in innocent hero worship. The two freckled little terrors looked respectfully upon the uncle who could send them to jail; and Dick Bennett, Harold's young brother-in-law, offered to retain Harold for his future divorce suit-holding his wife's hand the while. Everyone was promising to give Harold his first case; each one would be that mysterious unknown, Harold's first client. Of course, as customary, unknown

to the family, Wong peeked in from the butler's pantry; but this time he did not escape unseen, as usual. At the black coffee, his pride got the better of his discretion; and, standing a little too far forward, Harold espied him.

Harold arose and pulled Wong in, decidedly nonplussed. "Wong, you old beggar, come here," he called, as he dragged the reluctant Celestial into the center of the room. "You've cooked every one of my favorites to-night, even down to the ice cream meringues I used to steal when your back was turned-now come along and congratulate me." He gave the faithful Chinaman's hand a hearty clasp.

Wong's keen, shrewd face lit up. "You lawyer now, Mlssa Harold?" he queried. "You slendee bad boys steal cookies from kitchen to jail," with a meaning glance at two freckled faces. "You heap big man now, like your flader, eh?"

"Well, I'm a lawyer now, Wong, but I don't know about the rest-except the cookie matter, of course," Harold was somewhat amused, but more touched, by the faithful soul's obvious pride. "You makee heap money, Missa Harold, now?"

"Maybe yes, maybe no, Wong. I

have to get cases-people have to get in trouble and hire me to get them out of it. That's how I'd make the money."

"You not got first case, yet?"

There was a laugh at this, for Harold's admission to the bar was not a day old. "Maybe I gibbee first case, yet. Maybe makee heap money, you gettee mallied, eh?"

There was a laugh at this, and Harold blushed fiery red. For the family suspected, and with truth, that Harold had a girl. Blue-eyed Sallie Everett, who didn't reach beyond his shoulder, had his heart safely in tow.

They all arose from the table, and Wong departed for his kitchen, well pleased with the laugh he had raised. The practical thrusts of the old-time, shrewd Chinese retainer usually drove home.

"This dinner is so good," Armstrong, Sr., remarked, as he lit his cigar, "that I hate to think it's practically the last for a year to come. Mother," Charles Armstrong turned to his wife, "I'll give up that trip even now, and stay home and let Wong cook for us. That's vacation enough for me."

Mrs. Armstrong shook her head. This dropping of all cares for a year's trip around the world had been her dream. The very next day Harold moved to his club, and the Armstrong parents sailed on a Pacific liner bound for the Orient.

The Armstrongs were to leave for the Orient on the morrow, and Mrs. Armstrong wanted Wong to go to one of her daughters; he refused, going instead to work in a laundry in which he had an interest.

The Armstrong parents had sailed. only twenty-four hours. Harold, his name modestly printed at the end of a line of seven, had "his offices" in the quarters of a big corporation lawyer, one of his father's friends. Work for the firm had kept him busy enough not to worry over the clients of his own, who had not as yet materialized.

At this particular moment, however, in his club at 6:30 p. m., Harold's mind was not on clients. He was tying his

necktie in a hurry. Sally Everett had an impromptu dinner and theatre party, and his tie was behaving, as it usually does when one is late and one's best girl is waiting. Parenthetically be it remarked, he had told his sister Bessie that "work at the office" had prevented his dining with her-at which she had sniffed incredulously. He was cursing luridly when there was a knock at his door. "Mr. Armstrong was wanted at the telephone." Swearing a little bit more, he answered the call.

It was the City Prison that wanted him—a client of his was there who desired him immediately-he couldn't catch the name—and the desk sergeant hung up. "A client" not "the client," the desk sergeant had said. Even in his vexation, Harold grinned, as he quoted the indefinite article in his excuses to Sally Everett, with an eye to the impression on Papa E. He took Sally's scolding sadly, promised to join the party later, and caught the street car it was before the days of motors to the City Prison.

"Here's your client," said the desk sergeant, leading the way to the grating. The turnkey unlocked the door, and there, sad and dejected, sat Wong, all the happiness out of his shrewd, bright face.

"In for spittin' on turnkey explained.

clothes," the

Then Harold knew it all. The Chinese laundrymen, when they dampened the clothes for ironing, took a swallow of water in their mouths and sprinkled it through their teeth, to obtain just the proper degree of moisture. This was a most reprehensible practice, and a newly awakened antiseptic public conscience had just obtained, and was rigidly enforcing an ordinance against this time-honored custom; Wong's was one of the first arrests under this new act. He had been caught in the act. The policeman on the beat himself had seen the misdemeanor, and had brought him in by the nape of the neck, as it were. There was no possible plea but guilty.

It was impossible to convince Wong of the error of his ways. It was a good

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