"From grave to gay" is but a step; "from lively to severe," another,--I know not which of the two is longer. It was literally from grave to gay when the old San Franciscans used to wade through the sandy margin of Yerba Buena cemetery in search of pleasure at Russ' Garden on the mission road. It flourished in the early Fifties--this very German garden, the pride and property of Mr. Christian Russ. It was a little bit of the Fatherland, transported as if by magic and set down among the hillocks toward the Mission Dolores. Well I remember being taken there at intervals, to find little tables in artificial bowers, where sat whole families as sedate, or merry, and as much at ease as if they were in their own homes. They would spend Sunday there, after Mass. There was always something to be seen, to be listened to, to be done. Meals were served at all hours, and beer at all minutes; and the program contained a long list of attractions,--enough to keep one interested till ten or eleven o'clock at night. I can remember how scanty the foliage was--it resembled a little the toy-villages that are made in the Tyrol, having each of them a handful of impossible trees that breathe not balsam, but paint. I remember the high wind that blew in bravely from the sea; the pavilion that was a wonder-world of never-failing attractiveness; and how on a certain occasion I watched with breathless anxiety and dumb amazement a man, who seemed to have discarded every garment common to the race, wheel a wheelbarrow with a grooved wheel up a tight rope stretched from the ground to the outer peak of the pavilion; and all the time there was a man in the wheelbarrow who seemed paralyzed with fright,--as no doubt he was. The man who wheeled the barrow was the world-famous Blondin. [Illustration: Russ Gardens, 1856] Another sylvan retreat was known as "The Willows." There were some willows there, but I fear they were numbered; and there was an _al fresco_ theatre such as one sees in the Champs-Elysées; indeed, the place had quite a Frenchy atmosphere, and was not at all German, as was Russ' Garden. French singers sang French songs upon the stage--it was not much larger than a sounding-board. An air of gaiety prevailed; for I imagine the majority of the _habitués_ were from the French Quarter of the city. Of course there were birds and beasts, and cages populous with monkeys; and there was an emeu--the weird bird that can not fly, the Australian cassowary. This bird inspired Bret Harte to song, and in his early days he wrote "The Ballad of the Emeu"; O say, have you seen at the willows so green, So charming and rurally true, A singular bird, with the manner absurd, Which they call the Australian emeu? Have you Ever seen this Australian emeu?