The Fantastic City

When Patti sang in San Francisco, the city went mad over her, a happy insanity that sent crowds following her carriage when she drove with Nicolini, or besieging the stage door to cheer when she appeared. Her piquant personality and winsome prettiness, with the heavenly voice, made her altogether irresistible, and she was generous with her singing. She would trill and carol far beyond the score, and often at the end of the opera, when she took her calls and caught flowers tossed to her from the boxes, would signal to the orchestra leader and the strains of 'Home, Sweet Home,' would silence the tumultuous audience. Or she might gaze pensively at a flower she held and sing 'The Last Rose of Summer,' which was a perfect aria for her voice, so crystal clear yet filled with color.

This was in '84 and the following year she came again for the first of her farewells. Colonel Mapleson, her impresario, conceived the idea of farewell tours which were repeated annually for years. He was something of a personage in those days, an impeccable Beau Brummel who decorated the foyer of the theater at every performance. Seats for the second season were sold out long before Patti and her troupe arrived, and anticipation was keen. Etelka Gerster, a lovely Hungarian who had been contralto in the first season, had been replaced by Madame Scalchi, an enormous Italian woman with the richest contralto I ever heard, like deep, wine-colored velvet. Photographs of Patti and Scalchi adorned shop-windows and there were displays of 'opera cloaks for the Patti season' — white brocade dolmans and pale velvet wraps trimmed with swansdown. Swathes of silk — peach-blow moiré antique or plum-colored gros grain — were labeled 'dress lengths for the opera'; and there were painted fans, lace handkerchiefs, pearl opera glasses, and opera bags to hold them, all for Patti's season. Its sartorial impetus was more than pleasantly profitable for merchants, and florists likewise profited, for the singer's rooms at the Palace were filled with flowers and set pieces galore passed over the footlights.

It was during this second visit that we met Patti when General and Mrs. Walter Turnbull gave a reception for her at their Van Ness Avenue home. She wore a little white bonnet on her birdlike head, and a polonaise gown of garnet silk, much too old for her, but in the prevailing fashion; and was bewitchingly pretty. Mrs. Turnbull had engaged three talented little girls, the Joran children, to give a musical program during the afternoon. The quaint little sisters, whose father was a music-master, played violin, 'cello, and piano. Two of them, Elise and Pauline Joran, afterward found fame abroad. Patti was delighted with their performance.

After one of their numbers, Mrs. Turnbull brought forward her small son, Walter, Jr., to meet the diva, so that he might recall the encounter in after years. Patti stooped to greet him. 'And what do you play on, my little man?' she asked, smiling. Walter, aged six, answered promptly. 'I play on the sidewalk,' he said, politely informative.

Etelka Gerster, who became so popular in Patti's first season, tragically lost her voice soon afterward, and, although we heard occasionally that physicians abroad promised her return to opera, I think she never sang again.

Jane Hading, beauty of the French stage, came to California with Coquelin the Elder, to play Molière in Mission Street. Except for brief seasons such as this, the old Grand Opera House had lost place, and was given over to blood-and-thunder melodrama. But for these seasons Fashion descended again upon Mission Street from Van Ness Avenue and Nob Hill, and the great crystal chandelier which hung darkly over the auditorium for 'ten-twent'-thirt'' sparkled once more. It was 'the largest chandelier in America' and a beautiful thing, notwithstanding, which hung there in Mission Street until the earthquake of 1906. Then it crashed into the pit below, just a few short hours after the old theater's last audience had departed. It was on the historic night when, as Ashton Stevens later said, Caruso changed the name of 'Carmen' to 'Don José.' The Metropolitan Company of New York had just opened a season to give the Opera House, as it proved, a glorious finale.

Coquelin as Tartuffe and Mascarille was the revelation of a great artist in a school of comedy new to the West, polished to fine, high brilliance. The company played in French, but in spite of this and the unfamiliar sophistication of their art, audiences flocked to see them and applaud.

Hading as Claire in 'The Ironmaster' made Mrs. Kendal's Claire seem very flat. She had beautiful henna hair worn parted and in the new 'Hading wave' which was soon the fashion, a loose, heavy wave that replaced crimps, which were never less than dreadful.

The Kendals — Mr. and Mrs. — English players, enjoyed a peculiarly Victorian vogue. It was generally understood that they were morally immaculate, socially correct and happily married. People who never entered a theater, except to see Shakespeare presented by some player they knew to be above reproach in private life, preferably Barrett, went to see the Kendals. It is astonishing to recall how many of these rigidly selective play-goers there were. But in spite of numbers, their influence on the drama seems to have been negligible. Even Mrs. Kendal betrayed them in a way when, to their deep dismay, she appeared as 'The Second Mrs. Tanqueray,' a lady with a Past.

Across the bay in Sausalito, where offshore all British ships in port were anchored, an English colony lived on the hillside, and there the Kendals were sedately entertained.

French restaurants of San Francisco delighted Coquelin as they invariably did visitors from the Old World. At Marchand's, or any one of several places, one could dine as well as in Paris for but slightly higher tariff. Seventy-five cents paid for the table d'hôte at the old Poodle Dog, an eminently epicurean feast served with wine.

In very Victorian days of the eighteen-eighties, 'perfect ladies' never dined in our French restaurants. At a few 'oyster grottoes' and a Vienna bakery in Kearney Street, they might regale themselves in a limited way if moved to eat in public. But these places palled, and a gradual, tentative invasion of the Poodle Dog and Marchand's became definite and established.

These gay old restaurants once inspired a member of the Bohemian Club to write a parody on the 'Marseillaise.' I never heard more than the last lines of it, given with all the vehemence and fervor of the original 'March on! March on! All loyal hearts, to victory or death!' The words of the parody were the names of four popular French restaurants, 'Marchand's! Marchand's! The Maison Riche, The Poodle Dog, The Pup!!'

Sarah Bernhardt dined often at Marchand's during her visits. She played many times in San Francisco and always to enthusiastic audiences. Half of them knew not a word of French, but she swept them all into the rush of her tempo. There was a nervous, swift-moving element in all her acting, and she had, of course, the essential flame which burned to the end, as it did in Ristori. Remembering her fragile grace in Camille and the barbaric splendor of her Empress Theodora, I wonder that she was ever called unbeautiful. Her voice like a wind harp's music, and the way she held her head, chin high to give a long, suave line to the slender throat, are still vivid memories of Sarah in her summer years.

She wore white a great deal, then, off the stage; long robes of creamy wool girdled below the waist, and long white veils wound about the turban on her frizzed red hair. The year she played Cleopatra at the Baldwin, young Mrs. Will Crocker gave a breakfast party for her on Nob Hill, to the rather shocked surprise of the neighborhood. Dinners and teas for bishops were more the Nob Hill idea.

Which brings me to Mother's clerical teas. She gave one annually for visiting clergy during the church convention in San Francisco, and for several years they were a great success, sprightly parties at which every one had a good time. A bishop properly mellowed may be delightful. Bishop Kip, who was one of the New York Kips, was always a perfect guest. Bishop Nichols had a happy sense of humor and told amusing stories of his visits to small parishes of the Wild West. Dr. Moreland, of St. Luke's, afterward Bishop Moreland, was from South Carolina, and could give Negro dialect recitations that were better than the minstrels. Dr. Lion, of St. Stephen's, sang well and willingly 'obliged.' Mother's clerical parties were really politely hilarious affairs. We missed Dr. Ewer, longtime rector of Grace Church, a temperamental cleric and perfervid preacher of the Word. He had entered the ministry in deep repentance for an early life of atheism and newspaper reporting. In that phase he had written a book, a burlesque of Spiritualism called 'Three Eventful Nights,' which was a sensation in the fifties. The brotherhood of Spiritualists, to his amazement, took it seriously and gave it profound attention.

Mrs. Ewer, it was said, had been a dancing-teacher in her youth, but this seemed incredible of her plump, placid presence. True or not, she was a shining success as a clergyman's wife with her immutable serenity. In later days we heard that Dr. Ewer had embraced Catholicism and become a light of the Roman Church, but what became of Mrs. Ewer I never heard.

A great religious revival swept over the city in the early eighties when Moody and Sankey converted sinners in the old Tabernacle in Turk Street, which overflowed at their meetings. These revivalists were not less renowned in their day than was P. T. Barnum himself. Theirs was a vast and beneficent influence, however short-lived it may have been, and their honors were well won. As did most of the town, we went one evening to hear them and saw a great audience exhorted into emotional transports.

Moody, the preacher, was a short, rotund gentleman, not impressive to look at, with his jungle beard, but possessed of unmistakable magnetic power. He stood easily with his Bible in his hand while he talked, and his first, casual manner would gradually become more intense, until his voice was deep with feeling, but he kept always his intimate, everyday speech and a sincerity not to be doubted. It was impossible for his hearers not to feel that he spoke to each one individually. At the close of the service he would grasp the hand of as many as could make their way to the pulpit, most of them sinners just brought to grace who would announce their reform with tear-wet eyes.

Ira D. Sankey led the singing and looked exactly like his name, tall, thin, and sanctimonious with long 'weepers.' He had a trained choir which sang the 'Moody and Sankey Hymns' stirringly, and really popularized them. The 'Moody and Sankey Hymn-Book' became as familiar as 'College Songs,' and young people of the period, gathered about a piano, would render 'Washed in the Blood of the Lamb' with all the fervor they gave to 'Jingle Bells' or 'Champagne Charlie.'

The Moody and Sankey aggregation included also a 'lady elocutionist,' Laura E. Dainty, who recited 'Little Jim' and other parlor selections in a white nun's-veiling gown puffed at the back. Quite apart from the religious inspiration, Moody and Sankey meetings were worth all that was dropped in the contribution box.

Dr. Hugh Haweis was a zealot of another order who came in the early nineties on a preaching tour of the world with his violin. He was the famous rector of St. James's Church, Marylebone, in London, where his drawing power in the pulpit rivaled that of the great Spurgeon. Original as a clergyman may be in vestments of the Church of England, with many glints of humor, he had a pleasant way of breaking his discourse to play violin selections with fine musicianship. His theories on the uplifting effect of music had been written into a book, 'Music and Morals,' from which he quoted. Dr. Haweis was a small man with a decided limp, very noticeable when he stepped rapidly across a platform in the ardor of his address. It was said to be a souvenir of service under Garibaldi at the siege of Capua in his youth.

Church affairs played a more important part in the everyday life of past generations than they do today, and the visit of a famous clergyman was an event of note.

The son of Charles Dickens was a visitor when his father's books were still popular novels, and the son's readings from them, in the First Congregational Church, drew thrilled audiences eager to see one of the children of Gad's Hill Place. He was a fair, sad-looking gentleman with a melancholy droop to eyelids and mustache. Yet he read the trial scene from the 'Pickwick Papers' with keen relish of its humor. Not without apprehension we recalled stories of English ladies fainting in platoons when his father recited 'The Murder of Nancy Sikes.' But happily no one fainted in the First Congregational Church, although the younger Dickens's reading of this selection remains in my memory a vivid bit of histrionic horror; a dramatic tour de force doubtless reproduced inflection by inflection from his father's inspired rendition.

At an afternoon reception, Mr. Dickens's aspect of sadness was accentuated. He had little to say and that little was guarded. Wary of Americans he seemed. Lightly and inanely I asked him if he were tired of people perpetually lauding his father's books and deploring the criticisms of 'American Notes,' and his answer was, 'Ah! Personally I admire the United States very much and have enjoyed my visit.' Nothing could have been more discreet. Driven to the Cliff House, he listened patiently to the barking of seals, and in Golden Gate Park admired the Victoria Regia. It could never be said that the younger Dickens failed in appreciation of United States hospitality, and one felt that he would never write 'American Notes.' His mind was made up.

The Victoria Regia was a pond-lily; the largest in the world brought from the tropics to bloom in a pool in the Crocker Conservatory. So — now we had the largest chandelier, the largest flower, and some of the largest oil paintings in America. The Victoria Regia was an object of great popular interest. As I look back now, its blooming is one of the high lights of the eighteen-eighties. Every one talked of it. 'Have you seen the Victoria Regia?' served to open conversations at dinner-parties, or to change the subject. Every one went to the Park to look at it. In single file the citizenry passed around the pond to marvel at the great flare of petals. It really was a remarkable flower. The green leaf of its foliage measured several feet across and lay like the top of a pool table on the water.

Golden Gate Park, with the long panhandle entrance, had been laid out in lawns and driveways over several acres to become the city's favorite resort, filled with carriages on Saturday afternoons and Sundays. Crocker Conservatory was its great attraction. In it we saw orchids for the first time. There was a delicate pale blossom known as 'The Holy Ghost Flower' with a tiny curled petal like a white dove in its heart. I haven't heard of the Holy Ghost Flower or the Victoria Regia for years. Possibly they are extinct like Jacqueminot roses which have ceased to bloom.

The Japanese Tea Garden came to the Park with the Midwinter Fair in '93, and remained, a charming souvenir, with its cherry bloom and waterfalls, tall stone lanterns, iris pools, and little tea-houses built out over waterways with stepping-stones. It is still the loveliest of places. This Midwinter Fair (still flashing forward) was a bright little exposition following the World's Fair in Chicago with some of the same exhibits and features. It was set in a valley of Golden Gate Park with charming little buildings and a Midway; and its season was a long fiesta for San Francisco. One wandered through eucalyptus avenues filled with Javanese, Arabs, Hindus, Samoans, and other picturesque aliens while Sousa's Band played, or Fritz Scheel's Vienna Orchestra. Once they both played at a concert of combined forces and this confluence of music attracted wide interest. It was a Niagara when they played together.

In the eighteen-eighties, high cart-wheel bicycles rolled through driveways of the Park, where horses shied at them, and no wonder. With riders perched high on the wheels, they had a curiously entomological aspect, like gigantic Daddy-Long-Legs.

One afternoon we saw Miss Minnie Warren and Commodore Nutt out for a drive, standing on the seat of their barouche to acknowledge greetings. Miss Minnie was about twenty inches high and the Commodore an inch or so higher. This must have been in the seventies, when they made a tour of the world with General and Mrs. Tom Thumb, at whose wedding in New York they had been bridesmaid and groomsman. Miss Minnie was a sister of the bride. They were all attractive little creatures, intelligent in miniature, and well-mannered. The Tom Thumbs were especially polished, accustomed as they were, according to Mr. Barnum, to 'All the Crowned Heads of Europe.'

Oscar Wilde's visit, not long after that of Charles Dickens, Jr., created no furor. It was long before his brilliant epigrams were widely quoted, before they were written, when he was deep in aestheticism, lecturing on 'Interior Decoration.' He was then wearing what afterward came to be known as a Fauntleroy costume, black velvet knee-breeches, short black velvet coat over a white silk blouse, black silk stockings and low shoes. It was not becoming, and he was not attractive, with his heavy face, one eye drooping, and an expression of utter ennui. For the life of me I can recall nothing of his lecture save the word 'dado,' to which he gave a peculiarly broad pronunciation. And I know nothing of how he passed his time in San Francisco. Doubtless he was frightfully bored, and looked upon California as a sort of No Man's Land where he spoke to penguins. The response naturally would be apathetic.

But something of the old, ingenuous enthusiasm of early days, contagious and exhilarating, flared again for Irving and Terry when they came with the London Lyceum Company to play at the old Grand Opera House. The whole city turned out for them. Press agents had very little to do with the overwhelming interest. We were lovers of the theater and for years had heard of the English actor and entrancing Ellen Terry. Those who saw them in London brought back accounts of lavish productions and distinguished acting; of a King Richard and Shylock, of a Portia and Beatrice, original and brilliant. When these all finally came to America and advanced across the continent in the royal progress of a special train, we were naturally keyed up to concert pitch.

People stood about the Palace Hotel for hours to catch a glimpse of the stars, and the sight of Irving's long, thin form crossing the court, followed by his little fox terrier, Fussy, or of Miss Terry muffled in veils attended by her efficient-looking daughter, Miss Craig, apparently repaid them.

The day before seats were placed on sale at the theater, a line formed from the box office, extending out Mission Street for blocks. All night it waited. Camp-stools, pillows, and substitutes paid by the hour to hold places, were resorted to, while small restaurants of the shabby neighborhood served trays of coffee and sandwiches. Ticket speculators were few. Those who waited were for the most part agents of groups of playgoers who paid them for the service; and some were enthusiasts there on their own account.

Never a more exciting 'first night' filled Mission Street with a crowd of spectators gathered to see the audience arriving. 'Nance Oldfield' was given first, with Terry blithe and charming; a short comedy in which Irving had no part. Then we were swept into the cumulative horror of 'The Bells.' It was the sort of thing light-hearted San Francisco adored. We watched the guilty innkeeper haunted by ghostly sleigh-bells that rang on the sleigh of the traveler he had killed until he was driven to a nightmare death by the everlasting sound. As Mathias, the innkeeper in 'The Bells,' Irving doubtless gave one of the most extraordinary exhibitions of histrionic power the theater has known. The reaction that night was a wild ovation. People stood on their seats to see the actor bowing before a storm of applause. It was a great night; but in calmer moments I preferred 'Becket' to 'The Bells.'

Tennyson's poetic drama written for Irving was new then, and it was produced with all the splendor of setting that made Lyceum productions the pride of theatrical London. Ellen Terry looked like the Blessed Damozel as Fair Rosamond; and Irving played the majestic character of the Archbishop with intellectual fire and a spiritual quality poignantly beautiful. His hurried, nervous mannerism of speech, so often condemned, I recalled in Charles Kean. In both actors it seemed to me the natural expression of intense feeling.

During his stay, Irving was elected honorary member of the Bohemian Club and so enjoyed its hospitality that he made a parting gift to each fellow member of a permanent pass to his Lyceum Theater in London. Bound in soft leather and adorned with his nervous signature, they are souvenirs in a number of San Francisco families.

Like most of California, I was unaware of the presence of Robert Louis Stevenson when he lived for a year or two in San Francisco before fame had found him. He was married there in 1880 to Mrs. Osbourne, of Oakland, at the home of Dr. Scott, but almost no one knew of the wedding. Mrs. Scott and Mrs. Virgil Williams were the only witnesses. Virgil Williams, the painter, was one of Stevenson's few friends in California. Together they would go to the Bohemian Club in its rooms over the California Market, where R. L. S. found several congenial souls; Dr. George Chismore, who wrote poems while he practiced medicine; and Charles Warren Stoddard. But I doubt if any he met thought the fragile young man would live long enough to set the world on fire.

His second visit I remember when he came with his wife, after a residence in Europe, where literary honors were heaped on him. They stopped at the Occidental Hotel, but Stevenson was too ill to be lionized. It was in the mid-eighties when he sailed out of the Golden Gate on Dr. Merritt's yacht, the Casco, bound for the South Seas, never to return.

Alter his death in Samoa, Mrs. Stevenson came back to live in San Francisco, and it was then California first knew her as a personage. She built a house on the Hyde Street crest of Russian Hill overlooking the Golden Gate, an Italian villa that was tremendously refreshing in its straight, clean-cut proportions. We were living through the East Lake period in home architecture when sudden ells and angles cut rooms into queer shapes and made wild exteriors, with roofs that slanted low or aspired to peaks, without reason.

The roof of the Stevenson house was perfectly flat; a terrace from which one looked out over the inspiriting expanse of bay and hills; still is, no doubt, since the house withstood the 1906 disaster, and the last I knew was a Carmelite retreat. There was a walled garden where tea was served, and the house was filled with souvenirs of Samoa; Stevenson's books and the Saint Gaudens medallion of R. L. S. over a fireplace, dominating the place.

Mrs. Stevenson was a fascinating woman: not beautiful nor finely brilliant, but with originality and a vivid personality that one felt the moment she entered a room — a stocky little person indifferently gowned, with a crown of short gray curls above piercing black eyes. This was long before the advent of the bob and Mrs. Stevenson's coiffure was considered eccentric, as were her cigarettes in that unenlightened day; which troubled her not at all. She had an independence delightfully complete.

Once in the Montecito home where her last days were spent, she showed me new wallpaper in the dining-room, a pattern of violent red apples in a confusion of green leaves. 'You don't like it,' she amiably surmised. 'No one does. They tell me it's dreadful. But I like it'; which was that.

While she lived on Russian Hill, the Stevenson monument designed by Bruce Porter was set in the Plaza — or Portsmouth Square, as it is now called. The little bronze ship with sails spread survived the fire of 1906 and is still a shrine for R. L. S. enthusiasts.

Brief and brilliant seasons in the old Grand Opera House drew fashion there again in its declining days. Emma Nevada came home from Paris to sing there, a Nevada girl who was called the perfect 'Mignon.' She named her little daughter for this favorite rôle.

Albani sang there, but I remember her best filling the Mechanics' Pavilion with her voice. It was at some celebration in the Fair season, and she stood on the bandstand in the center of the huge building, sending her fine, strong tones up among the rafters in 'The Star-Spangled Banner.' Albani was an American woman who took her name from her native city, Albany; one of the great singers of her day and an especial favorite with Queen Victoria.

Stars of the Metropolitan Company in its greatest days sang in the old Mission Street Opera House, and San Francisco's reaction was very like that of a country village when the circus is in town. It was all glamorous and thrilling for a biennial period of six weeks. When Damrosch conducted 'Die Walküre' with Schumann-Heink's deep golden-bell voice, or 'Tannhäuser' with Nordica, and Bispham to sing 'The Evening Star,' the old opera house seemed bursting with music and enthusiasm. Mancinelli conducting 'Carmen' for Calvé, with her careless beauty and fire, strained the old walls again, and Caruso singing Canio's Lament, drew 'Bravos' to shake the chandelier.

But no more thrilling music could have been heard beneath the largest chandelier in America than Julia Ward Howe's 'Battle Hymn of the Republic,' sung by a huge audience in her honor. It was at the Decoration Day Memorial Services of the Grand Army of the Republic in 1888. She sat on the stage surrounded by old soldiers, and they said she looked like a white-haired priestess of peace sitting there while the strains of her war song rang through the place.

Mrs. Howe had come to California to lecture on the Woman's cause of which we were beginning to hear much, and to visit her sister, Mrs. Adolphe Mailliard, who had been Annie Ward before her marriage to one of the Bordentown Mailliards, whose forebears came to America with Joseph Bonaparte. The Adolphe Mailliards had been living for a number of years on their ranch near San Rafael, a place of picturesque gardens where Mrs. Howe's pretty young daughter, Maude, afterward Mrs. Elliott, of Newport, visited them one winter. Mrs. Mailliard died there in 1895, just a few months before she and her husband were to celebrate their golden wedding.

One afternoon at a tea, Mrs. Howe spoke informally of women's clubs in Boston. We had scarcely emerged from the sewing circle, although a Browning Circle flourished under the leadership of Mrs. Norris, the mother of Frank and Charles G. Norris. She had been an actress in her youth, and read 'In a Balcony' with fine expression. But nothing like a modern women's club was known, and those Mrs. Howe described, in which art and letters were discussed in an atmosphere of social friendliness, were a new idea. An inspiration, in fact; for not long afterward the Century Club was founded by Sarah D. Hamlin, with Mrs. George Hearst for its first president, to become honorary president when her term expired. It was the first women's club of distinction in the West, and the first women's clubhouse was the Century's in Sutter Street below Van Ness Avenue, whence spread a definite cultural influence.

For years, membership in the Century carried a certain cachet of intellectualism, and it was, in a way, responsible for much of the new impetus toward erudition which went rather wild for a time. The transition from sewing-bees to afternoons with the Pre-Raphaelites, for example, was not accomplished without its amusing phases. But the wonder is, it was accomplished at all in so short a time.

This new vogue for erudition was, of course, a detail or manifestation of the Feminine Renaissance then beginning to be felt by the most indifferent mid-Victorians, if only because their daughters wanted to go to college. It is strange to have known the time of my youth when, it seems to me now, the female brain was deliberately stunted in its development; and to know also the present when girls go to college as a matter of course, practice professions, and find careers in politics. It is my belief that the feminine intuition we heard so much of in my young years was no more than subconscious cerebration; conscious cerebration being discouraged in women, the process was forced into the subconscious.

In San Francisco a charming woman, who was also a distinguished physician, did much to encourage conscious cerebration. Dr. Charlotte Blake Brown came from the Woman's Medical College in Philadelphia to practice medicine in the early seventies, when, according to popular prejudice, any lady who went in for learning must be a spinster without charm, while one who entered a profession, except that of acting, would be hard-visaged and militant. Dr. Charlotte was none of these, but young, attractive, married, and the mother of three children, an anomaly that required difficult readjustment among the prejudiced. Long before the close of her career, however, it was generally accepted as a fact that intellectual and professional women might be charming.

In her later years Dr. Brown was strikingly handsome, with silver-white hair and brilliant dark eyes — the least 'advanced'-looking woman imaginable, yet her quiet influence for the advancement of women was very great. She founded the Children's Hospital, with its training school for nurses, which opened economic possibilities to girls who theretofore had the choice of teaching school or music, with little else if they dreamed of independence. There were few shop girls then and no stenographers.

I know few details of Dr. Brown's life save that she came to California across Panama as a child in 1850, lived for a time with her people in Chile, and was then sent back East to school to be graduated from Elmira College. Her marriage followed and she came West again, to the Arizona frontier. After her three children were born, she decided to study medicine and entered the Philadelphia institution from which she was graduated in 1874. She practiced for thirty years in San Francisco and was especially distinguished as a surgeon. The bare record of her life may balance much pale, superficial living among women of her time — on whom in a way it was imposed.