Somewhere among those treacherous dunes--of them it might indeed be said that "the mountains skipped like rams and the little hills like lambs,"--somewhere thereabout was located the once famous but now fabulous Pipesville, the country-seat of my old friend, "Jeems Pipes of Pipesville." He was longer and better known to the world as Stephen C. Massett, composer of the words and music of that once most popular of songs, "When the Moon on the Lake is Beaming," as well as many another charming ballad. Stephen C. Massett, a most delightful companion and a famous diner-out, give a concert of vocal music interspersed with recitations and imitations, in the school-house that stood at the northwest corner of the plaza. This was on Monday evening, June 22, 1849; and it was the first public entertainment, the first regular amusement, ever given in San Francisco. The only piano in the country was engaged for the occasion; the tickets were three dollars each, and the proceeds yielded over five hundred dollars; although it cost sixteen dollars to have the piano used on the occasion moved from one side of the plaza, or Portsmouth Square, to the other. On a copy of the programme which now lies before me I find this line: "N.B.--Front seats reserved for ladies!" History records that there were but four ladies present--probably the only four in the town at the time. Massett died in New York city a few months ago,--a man who had friends in every country under the sun, and, I believe, no enemy. I remember the Mission Dolores as a detached settlement with a pronounced Spanish flavor. There was one street worth mentioning, and only one. It was lined with low-walled adobe houses, roofed with the red curved tiles which add so much to the adobe houses that otherwise would be far from picturesque. The adobe is a sun-baked brick; it is mud-color; its walls look as if they were moulded of mud. The adobes were the native California habitations. We spoke of them as adobes; although it would probably be as correct, etymologically, to refer to brick houses as bricks. There were a few ramshackle hotels at the mission; for in the early days it seemed as if everybody either boarded or took in boarders, and many families lived for years in hotels rather than attempt to keep house in the wilds of San Francisco. The mission was about one house deep each side of the main street. You might have turned a corner and found yourself face to face with the cattle in the meadow. As for the goats, they met you at the doorway and followed you down the street like dogs.