Back of Vallejo, reached by ferry from San Francisco, lies the lovely Napa Valley, filled with fruit ranches. Its southern end is narrow, but as one drives farther north it widens out into a broad green expanse of orderly fruit farms and pleasant homes, dominated by green hills on either side. Sonoma Valley and Napa Valley were the first of many enchanting valleys which we saw in California. As I look back on our long drive, it seems to me now that in California you are always either climbing a mountain slope or descending into a green valley flanked by ranges of hills. Calistoga, at the northern end of Napa Valley, has interesting literary associations. It was on the slope of Calistoga Mountain that Robert Louis Stevenson spent his honeymoon and had the experience of which we read to-day in "The Silverado Squatters." San Francisco is a pleasure-loving town. When its people are not eating in public places to the sound of music, they are likely to be amusing themselves in public places. The moving picture, the theatre, the vaudeville, all flourish in this big, gay, rushing city. The merchants of San Francisco have shown great courage and daring in the erection of their big buildings almost immediately on the stones and ashes of the old ones. They have done all this on borrowed money and loaded themselves with heavy mortgages, trusting to the future and to fat years to pay off their indebtedness. They have done an heroic work in a solid, impressive way, and deserve all the business that can possibly come to them. In San Francisco I saw for the first time that great California institution, the cafeteria. They pronounce this word in California with the accent on the "i." To a traveler it seems as if all San Francisco must take its meals in these well equipped and perfectly ordered restaurants. You enter at one side of the room, taking up napkin, tray, knife, fork, and spoons from carefully arranged piles as you pass along a narrow aisle outlined by a railing. Next comes a counter steaming with trays of hot food, and a second counter follows with rows of salads and fruits on ice. After one's choice is made, the tray is inspected and the pay-check estimated and placed on the tray by a cashier. You are then free to choose your table in the big room and to turn over your tray to one of the few waiters in attendance. You leave on the opposite side of the room, passing a second cashier and paying the amount of your check. It is a great game, this of choosing one's food by looking it over as it stands piping hot or ice cold, in its appointed place. The attendants are evidently accustomed to the weakness of human nature, bewildered by so overwhelming an array of viands. They keep calling out the merits of various dishes as the slow procession passes. "Have some broiled ham? It's very nice this morning." "Try the bacon. It's specially good to-day."