They say that about everything, old and new. They say it indiscriminately, without thought of what it means. They love the sound of it, and have made it a fixed habit. They say it about districts and buildings, about hotels, and the Barbary Coast (which is much like the old Bowery, in New York, and where ragtime dancing is said to have originated), and the Presidio (the military post, overlooking the sea), and Golden Gate Park (a semitropical wonder-place, built on what used to be sand dunes, and guarded by Park Policemen who carry lassos with which to stop runaways), and Chinatown, and the Fish Market (which resembles a collection of still-life studies by William M. Chase), and the Bank Exchange (which is not a commercial institution, but a venerable bar, presided over by Duncan Nicol, who came around the Horn with his eye-glasses over his ear, where he continues to wear them while mixing Pisco cocktails). They say it also of "Ernie" and his celebrated "Number Two" cocktail, with a hazelnut in it; and of the St. Francis Hotel (which is one of the best run and most perfectly cosmopolitan hotels in the country), and of the Fairmont Hotel (a wonderful pile, commanding the city and the bay as Bertolini's commands the city and the bay of Naples), and the Palace Hotel (where drinks are twenty-five cents each, as in the old days; where ripe olives are a specialty, and where, over the bar, hangs Maxfield Parrish's "Pied Piper," balancing the continent against his "Old King Cole," in the Knickerbocker bar, in New York). They say it about the Cliff House, (with its Sorrento setting, its seals barking on the rocks below, and its hectic turkey-trotting nights), about Tait's, and Solari's, and the Techau, and Frank's, and the Poodle Dog, and Marchand's, and Coppa's, and all the other restaurants; about the private diningrooms (which are a San Francisco specialty), about the pretty girls (which are another specialty), about the clubs (which are still another), about cable-cars, taxicabs, flowers, shrimps, crabs, sand-dabs (which are fish almost as good as English sole), and about everything else. They use it instead of "if you please," "thank you," "good-morning," and "good-night." If there are no strangers to say it to they say it to one another. If you admire a man's wife and children he will say it, and the same thing occurs if you approve of his new hat. If the old San Francisco was indeed so far superior to the new, then Bagdad in the days of Haroun-al-Raschid would have been but a dull prairie town, compared with it. But was it? The San Francisco attitude upon this subject reminds me of that of the old French Royalists. A friend of mine, an American living in Paris, happened to inquire of a venerable Marquis concerning the _Palais de Glace_, where Parisians go to skate.