My valentine needs not this day
  Of Cupid’s undisputed sway
    To have my loving heart disclose
    The love for her that brightly glows;
  For it is hers alway, alway. 
  Whate’er the fickle world may say,
  There’s nought within its fair array
  That for a moment could depose
      My valentine. 
  Where’er the paths of life may stray,
  ’Mid valleys dark or gardens gay,
    With holly wild or blushing rose,
    Through summer’s gleam or winter’s snows,
  Thou art, dear love, for aye and aye. 
      My valentine.

CLIFFORD HOWARD.

FEBRUARY 15.

JOAQUIN MILLER’S HOME ON THE HIGHTS.

* * * * *

  Rugged!  Rugged as Parnassus! 
    Rude, as all roads I have trod—­
  Yet are steeps and stone-strewn passes
    Smooth o’erhead, and nearest God. 
  Here black thunders of my canyon
    Shake its walls in Titan wars! 
  Here white sea-born clouds companion
    With such peaks as know the stars.

* * * * *

  Steep below me lies the valley,
    Deep below me lies the town,
  Where great sea-ships ride and rally,
    And the world walks up and down. 
  O, the sea of lights far streaming
    When the thousand flags are furled—­
  When the gleaming bay lies dreaming
    As it duplicates the world.

* * * * *

JOAQUIN MILLER.

FEBRUARY 16.

I have watched the ships sailing and steaming in through the Golden Gate, and they seemed like doves of peace bringing messages of good-will from all the world.  In the still night, when the scream of the engine’s whistle would reach my ears, I would reflect upon the fact that though dwelling in a city whose boundaries were almost at the verge of our nation’s great territory, yet we were linked to it by bands of steel, and Plymouth Rock did not seem so far from Shag Rock, nor Bedloe’s Island from Alcatraz.

LORENZO SOSSO,
in Wisdom of the Wise.

FEBRUARY 17.

We believe that when future generations shall come to write our history they will find that in this city of San Francisco we have been true to our ideals; that we have struggled along as men who struggle, not always unfalteringly, but at least always with a good heart; that we have tried to do our duty by our town and by our country and by the people who look to us for light, and that history will be able to say of San Francisco that she has been true to her trust as the “Warder of two continents”; that she has been the jewel set in the place where the ends of the ring had met; that she is the mistress of the great sea which spreads before us, and of the people who hunger for light, for truth, and for civilization; that she stands for truth, a flaming signal set upon the sentinel hills, calling all the nations to the blessings of the freedom which we enjoy.