from Los Angeles and Seattle, and a detachment from Chicago of twenty-five surgeons and seventy-five nurses, members of the White Cross-an organization for just such emergency work.

The scenes of camp life were repeated in a dozen small parks throughout the city, and in more extensive measure in Golden Gate Park-a magnificent pleasure ground reaching from the geographic center of the city westward to the ocean. There a formally arranged camp of a couple of hundred tents occupied a charming glade among the trees, and hundreds of tents were scattered along the walks and drives, hiding among the shrubs or in the open, as the caprice of the owner suggested privacy or sociability. At one end of the camp street a capacious building contained supplies of food and clothing, generously given out to all who needed. Near by an enormous iron kettle on an improvised fireplace provided ever-ready hot water in the interests of cleanliness and health. It was presided over by a picturesque individual with soft flowing hair and beard, a gold miner of the olden days, proud of the distinction.

Each tent bore marks of individuality and indications of the character of its occupants. The indolent were content to live under the most primitive conditions, while the ingenious and the energetic had extemporized tables and chairs, elaborate cooking arrangements, and many other little conveniences. A peep at the contents of some of the little homes recalled forcibly the difficulties of those days of fire. More often than not nothing had been saved except a parrot or a canary in its cage, or the family kitten; sometimes a single piece of furniture, a bureau, or a bed, or a rocking chair; occasionally a trunk or two. Here and there a vehicle of some kind behind a tent suggested the former occupation of its owner and explained the more elaborate furnishing of his domicile. Everywhere the stories of the refugees were set to one theme, passing into two variations.

"We lost everything; there was no way to carry it off," was the theme. "The fire came so fast we could only save ourselves," ran one variation; the

other, "We would have had plenty of time to save everything, but we thought the fire wasn't coming our way, so we left it till too late." Thus little was saved by either rich or poor.

In another corner of the park the Los Angeles Relief Committee was serving hot meals to all comers; at the park entrance great signs announced the headquarters of the Knights of Pythias, the Foresters of America, the Modern Woodmen, the I. O. O. F., offering to their members a brotherly hand of assist

ance.

Here was another part of the answer to my questions.

In other sections of the city relief stations were distributing food, not only to the homeless, but to those whose houses were left but whose means of livelihood was destroyed. There in long lines men, women, and children, Chinese, Irish, Italians, Japanese, negroes, and plain Americans, filed past the counters, where each received bread, potatoes, tea or coffee, fresh meat, canned meat, or salt fish, as the case might be that day, canned vegetables, sugar, salt, and vinegar. Soldiers and civilians working side by side distributed the offerings of the American people as they had been doing since the day after the earthquake, allowing no one to go hungry. The supplies were packed away in a soap-box, a wooden pail, a traveling-bag, the half of a wicker telescope case, a flour-sack, or a market basket, and the recipient went cheerily home to cook the meal in the street. There was no room for pride in San Francisco, and her people had accepted the situation with a good grace that told volumes.

Probably half of San Francisco was living in tents, but beyond a question all of San Francisco was cooking out-ofdoors and living by candle-light. Until the cracked and shattered chimneys should be repaired and pronounced safe, and the water supply restored, no fire might be built in any house, no kerosene lamp used, no gas or electricity supplied. So every street displayed a nondescript array of kitchens along its curb lines, presided over sometimes by a Chinese or Japanese servant, but more often by the lady or the daughter of the house, or

a father or sons, recalling days in camp. From a primitive fireplace of a few bricks, with perhaps an oven grate across the top, with a shoe-box or a kitchen table on its side as a wind-break, to a handsome nickeled range installed in a spacious shed, with kitchen table, settee, shelves, and coal-box, every possible variation in the elements and their combination was to be found. A tiny round stove, with barely room for a teakettle on it, under a proud sign, "The Palace Grill," stood neighbor to a complete kitchen with a fireplace, a range, and hospitable seats, with the idiomatic but cordial invitation over the door, "Kick in !" Everybody was cooking out-ofdoors, and nobody cared. For" There's many that's worse off than we, and we ought to be thankful we've a house over our heads," as a genial Irish lady, busily engaged in concocting a toothsome threecourse meal under impossible conditions, expressed it.

A walk up Market Street and through the unburned residence district revealed another part of the answer. Every telegraph pole and bit of standing wall bore a sign, hastily drawn or painted, bearing directions to a temporary office of some business enterprise or other. At least every other fine residence in the Western Addition housed a bank or an insurance company or a firm of lawyers or a commercial or manufacturing company. In many places along the ruined streets and on vacant lots elsewhere temporary frame buildings were already going up, their fronts announcing proudly that new

stocks of goods were on the way, to be ready for the public in a few days or weeks.

Gangs of workmen were busy along the principal car lines, repairing the tracks, stringing new trolley wires, and giving promise of a speedy resumption of service. Telephone wires, gas-pipes, water mains, and sewers were being inspected and repaired. Armed with permits from the Chief of Police, business men were hunting for their safes and vaults, and having them burglarized by the experts whose signs appeared on every corner. On a fine old residence on Van Ness Avenue a sign of circus poster effect announced that San Francisco's greatest department store would open there within a week with a large stock of goods. At intervals a dull re port told of the dynamiting of some tottering wall, a menace to traffic. Everywhere the city was busy, beginning the work of temporary reconstruction and readjustment.

Everywhere, in the business districts, in the camps, in the improvised kitchens on the streets, among all classes of people, men and women, high and low, officials and private citizens, I found the best, the fundamental, answer to my question. The spirit of the people of San Francisco-cheerful, enterprising, a little happy-go-lucky perhaps when things went well, but brave, uncomplaining, unselfish, when disaster came, facing the future with a smile-will make the new San Francisco. San Francisco, May 10, 1906.

H. J. H.