When we were not playing ball we were either sightseeing in the neighborhood of San Francisco or else being entertained by some of the numerous friends that we made during our stay in "the glorious climate of California," the first supper at Marchand's being followed by a host of others, and dinner parties, banquets and theater parties were so thickly sandwiched in that it was a matter of wonderment that we were ever able to run the bases at all. There was scarcely a single place of interest accessible to the city that we did not visit, from the Cliff House, which is one of the most popular resorts that Sari Francisco boasts of, its spacious grounds and verandas being thronged with people on Sundays and holidays, to the Chinese quarter, a portion of the city that no visitor to the Golden State should miss seeing, even if he has to make a journey of one hundred miles to do so. The Chinese quarter of San Francisco is a city in itself, and one in which the contrasts between wealth and poverty is even more marked than it ever was in the Seven Dials of London. The stores of the well-to-do Chinese merchants are filled with the richest of silks, the rarest of teas and the most artistic of bric-a-brac, the carvings in ivory and fancy lacquer work being especially noticeable, but close to them in the narrow streets are the abodes of vice and squalor, and squalor of the sort that reeks in the nostrils and leaves a bad taste for hours afterward in the mouths of the sight-seer. At the time of our visit both the opium dens and the gambling houses were running in full blast, and this in spite of the spasmodic efforts made by the police to close them. John Chinaman is a natural born gambler, and to obtain admission to one of his resorts is a more difficult matter than it would be for an ordinary man to obtain an audience with the Queen of England. He does his gambling behind walls of steel plate and behind doors that, banged shut as they are at the slightest sign of danger, would have to be battered down with sledges or blown open with dynamite before one could gain admission, and by that time the inmates would have all escaped and nothing would be left behind to show the nature of the business carried on. Crime runs rampant in this section of the town, and when a Chinaman is murdered, in nine cases out of ten the slayer escapes punishment at the hands of the law, though he may have it meted out to him in some horrible form at the hands of the dead man's friends and relatives. To go through the Chinese quarters by daylight is a sight well worth seeing, but to go through there with a guide after the night's dark shadows have fallen, is more than that. It is a revelation. These guides are licensed by the city, and are under the protection of the police. They are as well known to the Chinamen as they are to the officers of the law, and the visitor is always safe in following wherever they may lead.