How we all love a city that we have once contemplated making our home! Such a city to me is San Francisco, and but for unavoidable duties elsewhere, I would be there today. I loved that bright, beautiful city, and even the mention of its name sends my blood bounding more quickly through my veins. That might have been _my_ city, and I therefore rejoice in its prosperity. I am distressed when calamity overtakes it--I never lose faith in its ultimate success. The heart of the city is sound. It has always been sound, even in the early days when a ring of corrupt adventurers would have salted the city of the blessed herb with an unsavory reputation, but for the care of staunch and courageous protectors at the heart of it. San Francisco is not the back door of the continent. San Francisco is the front door. Every ship sailing out of its magnificent bay to the Orient, proclaims this fact. San Francisco will one day lead the continent. A city that cares for its poor and helpless, its children and dumb animals, that encourages art and learning, and never wearies in its prosecution of evil-doers--that city will eventually emerge triumphant from every cloud of evil report. Long live the dear city by the Golden Gate! MARSHALL SAUNDERS, _July_, 1909. "Senor Barrow, I congratulate you," Morale said, in his native tongue. "A woman who cannot be won away by passion or by chance, is a woman of gold." GERTRUDE B. MILLARD, in _On the Ciudad Road, The Newsletter, Jan._, 1899. AT THE PRESIDIO OF SAN FRANCISCO. The rose and honey-suckle here entwine In lovely comradeship their am'rous arms; Here grasses spread their undecaying charms. And every wall is eloquent with vine; Far-reaching avenues make beckoning sign, And as we stroll along their tree-lined way, The songster trills his rapture-breathing lay From where he finds inviolable shrine. And yet, within this beauty-haunted place War keeps his dreadful engines at command. With scarce a smile upon his frowning face, And ever ready, unrelaxing hand ... We start to see, when dreaming in these bowers, A tiger sleeping on a bed of flowers. EDWARD ROBESON TAYLOR, in _Moods and Other Verse._ MARCH 1. THE CITY'S VOICE. A mighty undertone of mingled sound; The cadent tumult rising from a throng Of urban workers, blending in a song Of greater life that makes the pulses bound. The whirr of turning wheels, the hammers' ring The noise of traffic and the tread of men, The viol's sigh, the scratching of a pen-- All to a vibrant Whole their echoes fling. Hark to the City's voice; it tells a tale Of triumphs and defeats, of joy and woe, The lover's tryst, the challenge of a foe, A dying gasp, a new-born infant's wail. The pulse-beats of a million hearts combined, Reverberating in a rhythmic thrill-- A vital message that is never still-- A sweeping, cosmic chorus, unconfined.