A few days ago, in the warm and brilliant winter sunlight there, I was strolling along the Embarcadero. Now all my life I have been very fond of roving the streets.... And that confession reminds me: I one time heard a minister (a clergyman of considerable force of eloquence) preach a sermon against streets. His idea seemed to be that streets were not good for one--that they were very bad places. He admonished mothers to keep their children "off the streets." He regarded it as very reprehensible in a wife for her to "gad the streets." The footpad (he said) plied the street at night, while the righteous were at home in bed. What so sad as "a child of the streets"? If we wished to describe a worthless canine we called it a "street dog." The outcast has his home in the streets. The drunkard makes his bed in the street. It was painful (I gathered) for a civilized being to hear the "language of the street." And so on. But I very much fear that the eloquence of this gentleman was greater than his Christianity. If we are to love our neighbors as we do ourselves, we will find him in greatest variety in the streets. If we are to give away our cloak, the beneficiary, I should think, would be a citizen much accustomed to the streets. And, as far as I can make out, there is more rejoicing in heaven over the arrival of a sister who has "walked the streets" than attends the reception of a nun. Certainly I admit that roaming the streets (like everything else) can doubtless be overdone. Nevertheless, to most people, people of ordinary ways of life (like myself), I highly recommend the practice, as a most healthful exercise, as a pleasant course of profitable education, as a source of endless amusement, and as a Christian virtue. The trouble, I think, with most of us is not that we see too much of the streets but that we do not see as well as we might the streets we happen to be on. We do not read as we run. So I would write an article In Praise of Streets. As I was saying (when that minister switched me off), I was strolling along the Embarcadero. Among all the different sorts of streets there are none I think more beguiling than those which lie along the water front of a town or a city. The water-front streets of all seaport cities, of course, partake very much of the same character. Particularly in the picturesque aspect of the shop windows.