Some of the cable cars have disappeared--they began to go in those wonderful years of reconstruction right after the fire, and they are already obsolete in the city's chief thoroughfare, Market street. The others remain. Over on Pacific avenue is a little line that the San Franciscans dearly love, for it is particularly reminiscent of the trams that used to clatter through Market street before the fire--a diminutive summer-house in front and pulling an immaculate little horseless horse car behind. Eventually all will go. One road's franchise has already expired and upon it San Francisco is today maintaining the first municipally operated street car line in any metropolitan city of America. If the experiment in Geary street succeeds, and it is being carefully operated with such a hope clearly in view, it will probably be extended to the cable lines when their franchises expire and they revert automatically to the city. * * * * * [Illustration: Where the Pacific rolls up to San Francisco] The distinctive mannerisms of San Francisco are changing--slowly but very surely indeed. Some of them still remain, however, in greater or less force. At the restaurants, in the shops and in the hotels you receive your change in "hard money"--gold and silver coin. Your real San Franciscan will have nothing else. There is something about the substantial feeling of a coin, something about the tinkling of a handful of it that runs straight to the bottom of his heart. Since the fire--which worked ever more fearful havoc with San Francisco comforts than with the physical structure of the city--the use of paper money has increased. But your true Californian will have none of it. When he goes east and they give him paper money he fusses and fumes about it--inwardly at least. He thinks that it may slip out of that pesky inner pocket or vest or coat. He wants gold--a handful of it in his trousers-pocket to jingle and to stay put. And as for pennies. You who count yourself of the East will have to come east once again before you pocket such copper trash--they will have none of them upon the West Coast. Small change may be anything else but it is not Western. "Western," did we say? Hold on. San Francisco is not western. California is not western. To call either western is to commit an abomination approaching the use of the word "Frisco." "California is to all purposes, practical and social--a great island," your San Franciscan will explain to you. "To the east of us lies another dividing sea--the broad miles of desert and of mountains, and so broad is it that Hong Kong or Manila or Yokohama seem nearer to us than Chicago or St. Louis. We recognize nothing west of New York and Washington. Between is that vast space--the real West--which fast trains and good, bridge in a little more than four days. In there is your West--Illinois, Mississippi, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado--all the rest of that fine family of American states.