The opening of this playhouse (named for Lucky Baldwin) was quite a social event, and everyone of importance was there. I was very anxious to show some attention to a certain young lady whom I admired greatly, so I decided to send her some flowers to wear on this night. My eyes lit on lilies of the valley growing in pots which were quite common and inexpensive in the East, and seemed unpretentious enough for the pocketbook of a poor department-store clerk. The florist assured me they would be twenty-five cents apiece; so, with my usual haste, I purchased a dozen pots, picking off the blooms myself in the shop (wondering at the sudden obsequiousness of the man who waited upon me) and ordering them delivered to the young lady’s home. It was a beautiful present and a much-envied one, but a good lesson to me. The lily of the valley is about the only flower that does not grow prolifically in California. Instead of being twenty-five cents a pot, they were twenty-five cents a bloom, and my rashness cost exactly forty-five dollars. Determined to get my money’s worth, I carried the despoiled plants out to my cousin; but even here I was doomed to disappointment, for she informed me that the lily of the valley was a biennial and the plants would not bloom again for two years. Speaking of theaters, an amusing story is told of the earlier days in San Francisco when there was a semaphore on Telegraph Hill which signaled the approach of the weekly or monthly steamer. It was the habit of the citizens to drop whatever they were doing and run down to the wharf to meet the incoming vessel. One night there was a performance at a theater, and the heroine of the play was required to rush in crying: “My God! What does this mean?” This particular lady had gestures all her own and accompanied these words by waving her arms up and down like the handles of two pumps, and looking, at least to one member of the audience, like a human semaphore, for a voice from the gallery shouted: “Steamer in sight!” With that, every person in the theater grabbed his hat and coat and ran swiftly onto the street and down to the steamer dock, leaving a much-astonished actress on the stage.