The Golden City is entered naturally enough by a Golden Gate. It is as proud of its Golden Gate and bay as Sydney is of “our harbour,” and that is saying a good deal. All the same, Sydney doesn’t quite like California calling itself God’s country. My guide-booker says, “The entrance through the Golden Gate cannot be surpassed.” If he said that inside Sydney Heads he would be thrown to the sharks. And, as a matter of fact, having said that which is not the truth he would in some measure deserve his fate. Moreover, outside the Golden Gate there is a bar, of which more anon. There are other bars in the city which are safer except for millionaires, because you can’t spend less than twenty-five cents in them. A drunk in San Francisco is therefore an undertaking not to be entered on lightly. Talking of millionaires naturally suggests Nob Hill, the millionaire quarter of the Golden City. It is veritably a place of palaces. I have never seen so many splendid houses collected in such a small area. Their price in bricks and mortar alone runs anywhere from two to four millions, and yet it is a literal fact that the streets between them are grass-grown. If I had five dollars I should be inclined to bet them against five cents that this is a combination which no other city on earth can show. The reason, of course, is that on the mountainous streets which the cable-cars climb traffic of any other sort is practically impossible. No good American walks more than a block or so on a quite level street, and you might as well ask him to walk up the side of a house as to climb Nob Hill. Wherefore the cable-cars rush solitary up and down through a wilderness of stone-paved, grass-grown streets, flanked by palaces whose owners, I presume, have horses and carriages. How they get them down to the city and up again is one of the two or three unsolved problems which I brought away with me. Another of these is: Why did the practical American genius think it worth while to pave the precipices which they call streets round Nob Hill? Talking about streets reminds me that they don’t say street much in San Francisco. There isn’t time. They just mention the name. This is the way my guide-booker speaks somewhat flippantly of the streets in Millionairetown: “Upon taking the car you immediately pass through the banking and insurance district, climb up one of the steepest hills of the city to Nob Hill, passing on the left at the corner of Powell the late Senator Stanford’s residence, corner of Mason, the late Mark Hopkins’ residence.... Corner of Taylor, the residence of the late A. M. Towne.... Corner of Jones, Mr. Whittles’.... Corner of Taylor, the Huntington residence, while opposite is the residence of the late Charles Croker, adjoining, and on the corner of Jones is the residence of his son, W. H. Croker.”