Golden City

“ It looks down on the city with its innumerable homes, on the cemeteries within its shadow, on the Presidio with its tents and munitions of war, on the Golden Gate and on the waters of the Pacific, and it brings a blessing to all with its message of love and peace. It is a guide too, to the sailor coming over the seas from distant lands. As he strains his eyes to catch a glimpse of the coast the Cross stands out in bold relief against the eastern sky, and it tells him that he will find a hospitable welcome and safe harbourage within the Golden Gate. ”

“ The gayest, lightest-hearted, most pleasure-loving city of this continent, and in many ways the most interesting and romantic, is a horde of huddled refugees living among ruins. It may rebuild; it probably will; but those who have known that peculiar city by the Golden Gate and have caught its flavor of the Arabian Nights feel that it can never be the same. When it rises out of its ashes it will probably doubtless resemble other modern cities and have lost its old strange flavor. ”

“ And never was there a community or a city where Truth asserted her sway more potently in the midst of evil than in San Francisco in the trying days of her youth. With the rush from all lands to California for the coveted gold came the lawless and the blood-thirsty. Men in the gambling houses would sometimes quarrel over the results of the game or over some "love affair." Fair Helen and unprincipled, gay, thoughtless Paris were here by the Golden Gate. ”

“ We are weary of the city, its vices, its crimes and its follies, already. All cities are much alike after all, varying only in minor details, but the mountains; God be praised for them. There we shall find change and beauty, sunshine, pure air, freedom, and rest.
As the steamer approaches the Golden Gate, one of the most striking features of the glorious landscape which unfolds itself before the eyes of the traveler, is the bold crest of Mount Diablo standing out clear and sharp against the blue sky, over beyond the Contra Costa hills to the eastward of the Bay of San Francisco. ”

“ While the flames were yet consuming the 635 old San Francisco, her children were courageously planning the new; and supported by that well-nigh superhuman spirit which community misfortune never fails to inspire—the spirit that transforms weakness into strength, and transmutes, as by an altruistic alchemy, the base metal of "eachness" into the pure gold of "allness"—this stricken people built and built until, to-day, less than a decade after that memorable night, there stands by the Golden Gate a finer and more beautiful city than the one from which it sprang. ”

“ A great city on this great bay, beside this greatest of oceans, centrally situated, through whose Golden Gate pass the waters drained from broad fertile valleys, a harbor without an equal, with some hundreds of miles of water front ready for a thousand industries, where ocean vessels may moor beside factories and warehouses, with a climate temperate, equable, healthful, and brewed for industry; a city here, ugly or beautiful, fostered or oppressed, given over to the sharks of speculation or safeguarded as one of the brightest jewels of the nation, is an inexorable necessity ”

“ Though maimed, her Soul yet lives—indomitable will— The Faith, the Hope, the Spirit bold nor quake nor fire can kill. To-morrow hearts shall throb again with western enterprise, And from the ruins of to-day a city shall arise— A monument of beauty great reared by the Conquerors of Fate— The City of the Golden Gate and matchless sunset skies! ”

“ New York is full of sneak thieves who are on the watch for the unwary. You say you have not a friend in the city. Where are you from, my child?"
"From the south," replied Golden.
"Did you come to New York alone?"
"Yes madam. I am an orphan," replied the girl, not wishing to disclose her history to her interrogator.
"What do you wish for in this great city?" asked the lady.
"I want to find some employment at present. Can you help me?" asked Golden, timidly and beseechingly lifting her large blue eyes to the interested face of the lady. ”

“ Behind it is the great city. This Golden Gate seen from within, looking westward, is a narrow pass, giving a vista view of the broad Pacific, its waves rolling towards us thousands of miles from the distant shores of China and Japan. ”

“ The Golden Poppy, the State Flower of California, blooms in great profusion and with marvellous beauty on hillside in plain and valley, in field and garden, by lake and river, from the Sierras to the shores of the Pacific, and it is especially abundant on the hills which skirt the shores of the Golden Gate. ”

“ In the Golden City of St. Mary.
Oh I'll be shipping sunset-wards and westward-ho
Through the green toppling combers a-shattering into snow,
Till I come to quiet moorings and a watch below,
In the Golden City of St. Mary. ”

“ Poor Yellow City, where we walk this morning, meeting so many people, so many armed detachments, so many uniforms; poor Yellow City, closed to the world for so many centuries, an inviolable refuge for the rites and mysteries of the past; city of splendor, oppression, and silence! When I saw it in the autumn it had an air of desertion which suited it; but now I find it overrun by the soldiers of all Europe. In all the palaces and golden pagodas "barbarian" troopers drag their swords or groom their horses under the very noses of the great dreamy Buddhas. ”

“ Our study of Chinatown and the civilisation of the country of the Yellow Dragon, as seen in the City of the Golden Gate, has thus far brought us in contact with the social and business life of the Chinese and their amusements; but we are now to visit one of their temples of worship, the Joss-House. And here the real man will be revealed; for it is in religious services and ceremonies and beliefs that we get a true knowledge of a race or a nation. The conception of God which you have is the key to your character. ”

“ When will the Muses rest? When are they weary? And when they would not cease to call to me I went to them and I said: "The Golden Town is the Golden Town no longer. They have sold their pillars for brass and their temples for money, they have made coins out of their golden doors. It is become a dark town full of trouble, there is no ease in its streets, beauty has left it and the old songs are gone."
"Go take our message," they cried.
And I said to the high Muses: "You do not understand. You have no message for the Golden Town, the holy city no longer." ”

“ In our wanderings about the city the sleeping places of the dead naturally attracted our attention; and where, especially, on Sunday afternoons, the living congregate to mourn over their loved ones, to scatter flowers on their graves, or to while away an hour amid scenes which have a melancholy interest and tend to sobriety and remind one of another land where there is no death for those who pass through the Golden Gate of eternity. Cemeteries have always attracted the living to their solemn precincts at stated times, anniversaries and fiestas. ”

“ Be it known, O whosoever readeth, that if any prince of the royal family Everyone enter the city Daybyday through the Brazen Gate called Chance, he shall be forever held unworthy of the throne and crown. In the sacred Law of All the Ages it is written that a King of Allthetime may enter the Royal City only through the Golden Gate Opportunity. ”

“ La Caravana!” crowding into the Plaza to receive them, if the streets of Santa Fé no longer riot in tumult and bloodshed, they at least still riot in color and picturesqueness, kaleidoscopic enough to vie with anything in Constantinople or Cairo. You might think yourself in the Orient or in a city of old Spain transported upon a magic carpet, but nothing less like the United States can be imagined. Along the narrow crooked streets, dwellings hundreds of years old stand shoulder to shoulder with modern houses that have wedged themselves between. ”

“ The streets of earthly cities cannot vie with the celestial, though the gold of commerce may be found in their warehouses and mansions; but if men were as earnest in seeking after the treasures of Heaven as were the tens of thousands who flocked to the gold-fields of California in 1849, they would surely win the fortune which awaits them within the Golden Gate of the City on the banks of the Crystal River. San Francisco has her noted streets, just as the City of Mexico has her San Francisco promenade, leading from the Alameda to the Plaza de Zocalo ”

“ When a ship is in sight, some poor folk come and spread out the red lacquer that helps their scanty subsistence, and the people from the passing ship land and barter and in a few minutes are gone on their busy way and silence settles down once more. They neither know nor care that, near by, a mighty city spread its splendour for miles along the river bank, that the king known as Lord of the Golden Palace, The Golden Foot, Lord of the White Elephant, held his state there with balls of magnificence, obsequious women, fawning courtiers and all the riot and colour of an Eastern tyranny. ”

“ Like similar monuments, the Golden Gate consisted of three arches, the central arch being loftier than its companions, and was decorated with statues of the Emperor, Victory, the Fortune of the city, and a group of elephants in bronze. Upon the two fronts of the central arch was a Latin inscription in gilt metal letters, gleaming like a crown of gold upon the head of the gateway. The legend, “Theodosius adorns this place, after the doom of the usurper,” looked towards the west; while the words, “He who constructed the Golden Gate brings in the Golden Age,” faced the east. ”

“ These were the hotels, billiard-saloons, bars, and gambling-houses.
"It's a place bound to advance, sir," said Mr. Beck proudly. "Empire City, when I first saw it, which is two years ago, was only two years old. It is only in our country that a great city springs up in a day. Empire City will be the Chicago of the West."
"I see a city," said Captain Ladds; "can't see the people." ”

“ The Golden Gate Park is now famous the world over and vies in beauty and splendour with Central Park in New York, nay, in some respects surpasses this, in that it has a magnificent frontage on the Pacific ocean, a long coast view and a wide range of sea with the Farallone Islands, about twenty miles off in the foreground of the picture, and visible on a clear day always, and most enchanting in the sunset hour as we gazed on them. The Golden Gate Park dates back only to the year 1870, when the California Legislature passed an act providing for the improvement of public parks in San Francisco. ”

“ La Corriveau reached the city in the gray of the morning; a thick fog lay like a winding-sheet upon the face of nature. The broad river, the lofty rocks, every object, great and small, was hidden from view.
To the intense satisfaction of La Corriveau, the fog concealed her return to the house of Mère Malheur, whence, after a brief repose, and with a command to the old crone to ask no questions yet, she sallied forth again to carry to Angélique the welcome news that her rival was dead. ”

“ Perhaps we had the spleen, but the meaning and beauty of the city was quite as obscured to us as her name is to those having no knowledge of Spanish. Another thing that is even more obscured is why Los Angeles calls herself the City of Hotels? New York might as well call herself the City of Mosques, or Chicago the Citadel of Fortifications, or Colorado Springs the Seaside Resort! ”

“ In the meantime, even as the good citizens of Custer, Gayville, Central City, Golden Gate, Anchor City, and a host of other thriving towns, most of which have long been given over to the ghosts, were bustling about their exciting business, matters in the west were taking a slow but inexorable turn for the worse. ”

“ Property and life therefore are jealously guarded in the City of the Golden Gate, and bad characters who go thither to prey on the public soon get their deserts. In this respect then San Francisco is a desirable place in which to live. ”

“ Home-going groups are beginning the long descent. The voices of little children calling to one another 60silverly over the hillside. He and She are not hastening. They have loitered along to where a bend in the road affords a wide outlook upon the city below, the gleaming bay, the white-winged ships coming in through the Golden Gate, the distant hills. ”

“ London, where there is an institootion, or a charity, or a hospital, or a workhouse, or a hot-soup boiler in every street, is the city for that gentleman. Fiji, p'r'aps, for one who has a yearning after bananas and black civilisation. But not New York. No, gentlemen; if you go to New York, let it be when you've made your pile, and not before. Then you will find out that there air thirty theatres in the city, with lovely and accomplished actresses in each, and you can walk into Delmonico's as if the place belonged to you. But for men down on their luck, New York is a cruel place. ”

“ Nature, with her wise forethought, seems indeed to have formed this island opposite the Golden Gate, far inside, in the Bay, as a sentinel to watch that pass into the Pacific, and to guide the returning voyager after his perilous journeyings to safe moorings in a land-locked haven. Farther to the north is Ysla de los Angeles, Angel Island, with a varied landscape of hill and plain, comprising some 800 acres of land. ”

“ The golden [Pg 84] city was little better than trails over the wind-swept sand hills, our beautiful bay was covered with craft of all nations, lured here by the story of gold and deserted by crews who joined the masses of humanity of all nations and creeds ashore, infected with the delirium of the gold fever. They thought little of music that was stable. There were a few practical business men among them who looked farther than the mere hunting of gold. ”