Arizona's Yesterday

I had read and heard so much and which I had so longed to see. I saw a city rising on terraces from the smooth waters of a glorious bay whose wavelets were tempered by a sunshine that was as brilliant as it was ineffective against the keen sea-breeze of winter. The fog that had obscured our sight outside the Golden Gate was now gone--vanished like the mist-wraiths of the long-ago philosophers, and the glorious city of San Francisco was revealed to view.

I say "glorious," but the term must be understood to apply only to the city's surroundings, which were in truth magnificent. She looked like some imperial goddess, her forehead encircled by the faint band of mist that still lingered caressingly to the mountain tops, her countenance glistening with the dew on the green hill-slopes, her garments quaintly fashioned for her by the civilization that had brought her into being, her slippers the lustrous waters of the Bay itself. Later I came to know that she, too, was a goddess of moods, and dangerous moods;