“You’ll look sadly out of place here,” I warned.  “No artist would ever take such a well-groomed person for a model, nor would you be suspected of belonging to the great army of the unemployed.”

“Are they the only classes allowed?  Then I speak now for the purchasing right of your portrait.”

“Oh, I’ll pose very well as the ‘Amelican’ teacher of those little Chinese butterflies fluttering after that kite.  Aren’t they attractive in their lavender, pink, and blue sahms?” I said, as we seated ourselves on the bench.

“To be honest, to be kind, to earn a little, to spend a little less,’” he read from the face of the fountain standing against a clump of trees whose soft foliage drooped caressingly over it.  “Why, that’s from Stevenson’s Christmas sermon.  Look at that unappreciative brute!  He drank without reading a word!” exclaimed the man indignantly.

“Yes, but he feels the better for coming here.  He received the refreshment most needed and that is what Stevenson would have wished.  Some other may need and will receive the spiritual help.”

“Why is it here?” he asked.

“Because Stevenson loved this place and came often to sit on the benches and study the wrecked and drifting lives of the men who lounged in the square.”

“And the gilded ship on top with its full blown sails—­that must suggest his Treasure Island, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, and also the Manila Galleon, that splendid treasure-ship ladened with silk, wax and spices from the Philippines and China, which once each year made its landfall near Cape Mendocino and followed the line of the coast down to Mexico.”

He leaned with arm outstretched along the back of the bench and surveyed the park.

“This, you said, was the old Spanish Plaza.  What was here then?”

“At first just a sweep of tawny sand-dunes, surrounded by scrub oak and chaparral.”  I dropped my eyes to the gravel walk, that I might shut out the emerald green lawns, and flowering shrubs.  “Over the shifting hillocks wandered a little minty vine bearing a delicate white and lavender flower not unlike your trailing arbutus.  It was from the medicinal qualities of this plant that the little settlement was named Yerba Buena, the good herb.  Over there on the northwest corner where that dingy Chinese restaurant now floats the flag of Chop Suey stood the old adobe Custom House, the first building erected on the Plaza, and it was in front of this that the Stars and Stripes were run up when General Montgomery, who had arrived in the sloop-of-war Portsmouth, took possession in the name of the United States.”

“So that is where the square got its name—­from the ship ‘Portsmouth?’” His voice rang with the joy of discovery.

“Yes, but the new name never completely replaced the old.  We love the terms which come to us from Spanish days, and so, to many of us, this is still the Plaza.”

“I presume there was a great outcry when Montgomery pulled down the Mexican flag and ran up the American.  But I understand the country was helpless.”