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great and prosperous city. In churches and and schools and in the quiet observance of the Sabbath, San Francisco compares fayorably with any city of its size on the eastern slope of the continent. The prosperity of this city is not all material. Boston has furnished the model of her public school system, and New Englaad blood and training can be recognized in many of her institutions of charity and benevolence.
On Sunday we attended the church founded by Starr King, beside which he is buried. Kind hands still supply the flowers that decorate the grave of one whose loving heart so attached his friends, and whose genius and patriotic labors did so much to save California to the Union.
The vicinity of the city is full of places of interest. Every stranger is taken to the Cliff House to see “the lions”—here real “sea lions,” or monster seals, which seem half human as they splash, gambol and climb over the conical rocks near the shore. Lone Mountain Cemetery is one of the most beautiful and romantic burial places in America—a splendid marble monument of the lamented Broderick is here a conspicuous object. In the outskirts of the city is the old Mission Dolores—where for more than a century the Jesuits held absolute sway over thousands of their dependant Indians and Mexicans—now occupied in part as a woolen factory. The “Celestials” are here an institution—every third person one meets in the streets wears the loose, dark blue blouse, baggy trousers, pointed shoes and long, braided “pig-tail” of a Chinaman. They are quiet and reserved in manner, go about their business, turning neither to the right nor the left. Housekeepers here are unanimous in their praise as servants—but I will leave the “Chinese question” for discussion hereafter when I have seen them at home.
At twelve o’clock the largest and newest of the China steamships, the America, will leave her dock. Our Cleveland friends, Messrs. Worthington, Beckwith and Pannel, will come down and see us off. My next letter must be dated beyond the “Golden Gate,” far over the waters of the broad Pacific.
