San Francisco is probably the most cosmopolitan city now extant. Its three hundred thousand people sound the gamut of nationality in the most varying and dissonant chorus that ever greeted human ears. The struggle for survival is an astonishing mixture of fierceness and good-nature. Crowding along the streets, Irish and Chinaman, New Englander and Negro, show kind consideration, but in the marts of trade and at the polls “their guns are ballots, their bullets are ideas.” Old-time asperities are softening, however, even on these battlegrounds. The trend is upward, toward higher levels of hope and brotherhood. Eliminate the alcohol and opium habits, and all these would (and will ere long) dwell together in unity. Lives like those of Rev. Dr. Otis Gibson, and Mrs. Captain Goodall, invested for the Christianizing of the Chinese, or like that of Mrs. Sarah B. Cooper, devoted to kindergartening the embryo “hoodlum,” or that of Dr. R. H. McDonald, the millionaire philanthropist, consecrated to the temperance reform, are mighty prophecies of the good time coming. San Francisco is the city of bay windows, and its people, beyond any other on this continent, believe in sunshine and fresh air. In like manner, they are fond of ventilating every subject, are in nowise afraid of the next thing simply because it is the next, but have broad hospitality for new ideas. Rapid as the heel taps of its street life is the movement of its thought and the flame of its sympathy. Much as has been said in its dispraise, Mount Diablo—the chief feature of its environs—is not so symbolic of its spirit as the white tomb of Thomas Starr King, which, standing beside one of its busiest streets, is a perpetual reminder of noble power conserved for noblest use. Everybody knows San Francisco’s harbor is without a rival save Puget Sound and Constantinople. Everybody has heard of its “Palace Hotel,” the largest in the world, and one that includes “eighteen acres of floor;” of its “endless chain” street cars, the inevitable outgrowth of dire necessity in its up-hill streets; of its indescribable “Chinatown;” of “Seal Rock,” with its monster sea-lions, gamboling and howling year out and year in, for herein are the salient features of the strange city’s individuality. For a metropolis but thirty-four years old, the following record is unrivaled: Total value of real and personal property, $253,000,000; school property, $1,000,000; 130,000 buildings; 11,000 streets; 12 street car lines; 33 libraries and reading-rooms; 38 hospitals; 316 benevolent societies; 168 newspapers, and—the best fire department in the world!