Part 6

Back of the shoes--the cobbler. Cobblers are always philosophers. Not pretty men, but thinkers. In their little, dingy shops they sit all day with their eyes down, isolated from the “hum and scum” about them, to the tune of their “tap, tap, tap,” their minds are detached to think and philosophize and vision.

Now we are at the corner where we turn away from Fillmore street. There is a window full of dolls. Such a lot of homely dolls. They don’t make pretty dolls any more. They make them to look like humans. “Character” dolls they call them and they are “characters.” Now, when I was a little girl, they made dolls to look the way you wished human beings could look.--It is not hard to turn the corner.

In the Lobby of the St. Francis

There is something about having money enough to stay at the St. Francis, and to dine there and to wear smart clothes there that makes people step out and act sure of themselves. Even when they can’t afford it, and their stay there is a splurge or an outing, they act just as sure and stepping. And as for the people to whom the St. Francis is but an incident they act sure because they were born that way.

Never in my life have I seen such sure, well-dressed women as in the lobby of the St. Francis. And I am no greenhorn at lobbies. I have reviewed in my day some of the best peacock alleys in the country. There is the New Willard. Now when I think of the New Willard, I see frumpily dressed dowagers talking through their lorgnettes to moth-eaten senators. The Selbach in Louisville, the St. Charles in New Orleans are famed for their handsome women, but none are so free and proudly sure of themselves on peacock alley as California women. No women dress as they do either. They are not so chic as they are smart; their tailor mades, their furs, their hats with a preponderance of orange, their well-dressed legs and feet and a reserved brilliance that makes them the finest-looking women in the United States.

It is a fine pastime to step out from the surge of Life for a minute and let it ebb and flow around one in the lobby of the St. Francis. Such a pageant of individual stories. An exquisitely dressed young girl meets another there, and soon two young chaps appear and they all begin talking silly nothings, and laughing at each other’s silly jokes, and looking into each other’s foolish young eyes much as lovers have always done. A harassed business man rushes frantically to the telegraph desk and wires his firm at Pittsburgh. Some staid, comfortably-fixed tourists from Newton Center, Massachusetts, come in from sight-seeing and go up to their rooms and quickly get their shoes off. A group of Elks come in, arm-linked, and start one wondering about the enforcement of the dry law. In and out among all these moving comedies and tragedies flits like an orange-colored butterfly a little Oriental boy, an angel-faced page goes calling “Mister Smith,” and sober looking bell-hops stand alert to the sound of “Front.”

A beautiful woman steps forward and meets a handsome man and they go to dinner together, and somehow I don’t think he is her husband and wonder if she is a widow and decide that it is none of my business. If she has a husband he is probably an “ornery” fellow who never takes her anywhere.

Everyone who passes by me looks alert, and sure, and happy and prosperous, but I comfort myself that probably each one of them has as much to worry about as I myself do.

The Garbage Man’s Little Girl

This vignette is written because it can’t help itself and carries with it a hope that someone who reads it may know a little girl whose father is a garbage man. Suppose that you can’t think of anyone just now who is a daughter to a garbage man, it is best to read this just the same for you never know when you may meet her.

When you do, tell her not to care too much when the children at school tease her about her father and cry--“Phew--phew, here comes the gar-bidge-Garrr-bidge-Garrr-bidge.” Tell her at that time to try and sustain her personal integrity with philosophy. It won’t do her a particle of good but tell her just the same.

Tell her that her father is a terribly useful man. That if he should fail to function, then the disposal of garbage would become an individual problem and that the mamas of kids whose fathers are not garbage men would be obliged to say to their husbands--“Ed, dear, don’t forget to take the garbage bucket to the public incinerator on your way to the office.”

Tell her that just because her father collects dirt, it is no disgrace. Tell her to look at the people in good standing who peddle dirt. Tell her to look at the papers. Tell her to tell the world that it’s better any day to collect than to peddle dirt.

Tell her that when her father, up on his great smelly throne, drives around the corner of Powell and Geary that dressed-up folk needn’t disdain him so much. He’s a sermon. They won’t like him as a sermon so much as a garbage man but he’s a sermon just the same. The text is that back of most things that are dainty and beautiful is the drudgery worker. Tell her that there isn’t an immaculate kitchen in San Francisco that doesn’t depend upon her father.

Nor a feast at the Palace or the St. Francis. Tomato skins and the nests that cauliflowers come in, and gnawed “T” bones. What would become of them if she had no father. And coffee grounds and the nameless things that have been forgotten and burned by the absent-minded. Tell the little girl about Omar Khayyam and how he might have said--.

Oh, many a charred secret into the garbage can goes That from the kitchen range in blackened cloud once rose. Tell her that there is a professor at Yale whose father was a junk man. All this and more tell the garbage man’s little girl.

The Palace

Someone was telling me of an old couple who lost everything they owned at the time of the fire, and that they were very brave about it and never broke down, and even helped others, but that when someone came running up and said: “The Palace is on fire,” they both sat down on the curb and gave way completely to grief.

And they say that after the fire the first piece of publicity which was given to the world as a proof that San Francisco would come back, was that the Palace would be rebuilt immediately. And a man from Virginia City, a descendant of the Comstock days, told me that in Nevada they speak of “The Palace” as Russians speak of the Kremlin as a pivot of destiny. What I am trying to say, of course, is that the Palace is a tradition just as the Waldorf-Astoria is a tradition, only not at all in the same way.

The Palace is a great place for women who are alone and a place where a man may bring “the missus” with impunity. The Palace is stylish, perhaps, but principally it is select. It suggests to me women who wear suits of clothes, mostly dark gray, all wool and a yard wide, women who wear two petticoats and Hanan shoes and Knox hats and who carry suit cases covered with foreign express tags, and whom porters run to meet because they know that these women may not be so stylish as they are generous tippers. And the Palace suggests to me afternoon teas, and that peculiar composite chatter of women’s voices which is more like the sound of birds in a flock, and which Powys speaks of as a strange inarticulate chitter chatter which isn’t really speech at all.

The other day a well groomed young official from the hotel took me out to see the famous old Palace bar and the beautiful Maxfield Parrish painting above it. They have taken the rail away, and around the edge of the bar they have built a nicely finished woodwork wall which looks exactly like a great coffin, the coffin of John Barleycorn. After the manner of my species I wanted to see over the edge and the young man, thinking that I might be suspecting a blind pig, boosted me up to peck over. I asked him why they didn’t remove the bar entirely and he said with unsmiling naivete that they were waiting “to see” and that they had saved the rail, “in case.”

If I were a reformer I should agitate and have that remarkably joyous and beautiful Parrish painting placed where it could be seen. I’d take it out to some San Francisco school so that the dear Pied Piper and all the little round kiddies running after should be a delight to school children.

And now I have come to the end and all that I have said is that the Palace Hotel is the San Francisco tradition and everyone in the United States knew that long ago.

Zoe’s Garden

Zoe says emphatically that it is not her garden, but everybody’s garden. But it is her garden because she tends it, and every morning goes around among her flowers lovingly, giving a little dig of dirt here, and tying some frail sisters up there and then, with her scissors, clipping, snipping and nipping away. Yes, it is Zoe’s garden.

Anything that has spunk to grow is welcome in this essentially San Franciscan garden. And no one is allowed to bully the others. Big burly geraniums and proud dahlias must keep in their places and give the dainty lobelia, cinnamon pinks, oxalis and candy tuft their chance. The oxalis! How we tended it in pots in New England, and out here in California, bless its heart, it runs around like a native daughter. And as for the fuchsia, how far it has grown from the blue laws.

There is no formality in Zoe’s garden. Marigolds go wandering about in the most trampish manner, and poppies, because they are privileged characters, spring up as they please. Then, as though the two of them were not sufficient California gold, there is the faithful gaillardia with its prim little sunflower-faces smiling up at their Mother Sun.

It is a democratic garden, too. Golden rod and asters grow right in among the aristocrats. Fancy the snubbing they would get if they once ventured into a New England garden--Hm. There is freedom there, but not license, and every opportunity for individuality. The gladiolas, canterbury bells, gillie flowers and fox gloves grow as prim as in a conservative English garden. Pansies smile in their little bed, and although the nasturtium, the wild-growing, happy-go-lucky nasturtium, goes visiting around among all his neighbors, he is never allowed to interfere with those who wish to keep by themselves. The sweet peas stay very close to their tradition of wire netting, but they are not snobs at all, and give of their bounty to all who call. The sensuous jasmine is there, and the cold puritanical ceneraria and old maids’ pin cushions, with fragrance of sandalwood. The red-hot-poker grows stiff and straight, but the ragged sailor goes uncombed and untidy still.