of Information to travellers, who understand the meaning of the Cross.  It would not be a matter of large expense after all if Chapters in large centres would extend greeting to men and women who are journeying hither and thither and who often stand in need of just such services as the Brotherhood could give.  In a few hours after our arrival we were ready for the opening service of the General Convention, in Trinity Church, on Gough street at the corner of Bush street.

At intervals when duty would permit we made a study of San Francisco and its life, rich in scene and incident, and most instructive as well as attractive.  Some of the noticeable features of the city are its parks and squares.  In the northern part or section, Washington and Lobos Squares greet you, while Pioneer Park adorns Telegraph Hill, and Portsmouth Square or the Plaza is just east of the famous Chinese restaurant and close by police headquarters.  This last was famous in the early days as the centre of Yerba Buena, and here the American flag was raised for the first time when our marines under Commodore Montgomery took possession of the town.  Indeed some of the most exciting scenes in the early history of San Francisco were witnessed in this locality.  Volumes might be written about its Spanish and Mexican families, its adobe buildings, its gambling places, its haunts of vice, its public assemblies, its crowds of men from all lands, its social and civic histories.

But all this is of the past, and it seems like a dream of by-gone days.  When I visited it on two occasions, in company with friends, it was a quiet place enough; and the casual observer could never have thought or realised that around this romantic spot fortunes made by hard toil of weary months and years had been lost in a few short hours in the saloon and gambling places for which the vicinity was noted, that the worst passions of the human heart had been exhibited here, and that betimes amid the laughter of the merry throng in midnight revelry and above the strains of the “harp and viol” one could have heard the voices of blasphemy and the sharp, loud reports of pistols in the hands of careless characters, whose deadly bullets had sent many a poor unfortunate wayfarer or unwary miner from the gold fields to his long home.

If, in your saunterings, you go through the central part of the city you will find Lafayette Square, Alta Plaza, Hamilton Square, Columbia Square, and Franklin and Jackson Parks, at varying distances from each other and affording variety to the tourist.  In the south section you will see Buena Vista Park and Garfield Square, while to the west you have Hill Park and Golden Gate Park.  The Golden Gate Park is now famous the world over and vies in beauty and splendour with Central Park in New York, nay, in some respects surpasses this, in that it has a magnificent frontage on the Pacific ocean, a long coast view and a wide range of sea with the Farallone Islands, about twenty