It is a great pity that San Franciscans should have this weakness. They have plenty to be proud of, for their city is a marvel. But it has as yet all the disadvantages of newness. Its population, moreover, is as disagreeably unsettled as in the towns of the Levant. All the mud and dirt are still in suspension. I know very well, of course, that improvement is making immense and rapid strides, but to the visitor the act of transition is, of course, invisible, and he only sees the place at a period of apparent repose between the last point of advance and the next. He can imagine anything he pleases--and it is difficult to imagine the full splendour of the future of the Californian capital. But this is not what he actually sees. For myself, then, I found San Francisco as so many other travellers have described it, disorderly, breathless with haste, unkempt. Here and there, where trees have been planted, and there is the grace of flowers and creeping plants, the houses look as if rational people might really live in them. But for the vast majority of the buildings, they seem merely places to lodge in, dak-bungalows or rest-houses, perches for passing swallows, anything you like--except houses to pass one's life in. They are not merely wooden, but they are sham too, with their imposing "fronts" nailed on to the roofs to make them look finer, just as vulgar women paste curly "bangs" on to the fronts of their heads. There is also an inexcusable dearth of ornament. I say inexcusable, because San Francisco might be a perfect paradise of flowers and trees. Even the "weeds" growing on the sand dunes outside the city are flowers that are prized in European gardens. But as it is, Francois Jeannot,--"French gardener, with general enterprise of gardens," as his signboard states,--has evidently very little to do. There is little "enterprise of gardens." Yet what exquisite flowers there are! The crimson salvia grows in strong hedges, and plots are fenced in with geraniums. The fuchsias are sturdy shrubs in which birds might build their nests, and the roses and jessamines and purple clematis of strange, large-blossomed kinds, form natural arbours of enchanting beauty. Lobelias spread out into large cushions of a royal blue, and the canna, wherever sown, sends up shafts of vivid scarlet, orange, and yellow. If I only knew the names of other plants I could fill a page with descriptions of the wonderful luxuriance of San Franciscan flowers. But all I could say would only emphasize the more clearly the apparent neglect by the San Franciscans of the floral opportunities they possess.