“What is his fatherland and his business?” he asked as his eye traveled over the shop signs “Sanguinetti, Farmacia Italiana,” “Molinari & Cariani, Grocers;” “Oliva & Brizzolara, Real Estate.”

“His birthplace is the World Universal, and his profession-leading us back to nature,” I answered.  Then, as we passed the spick and span concrete facade of the Patronal Church of St. Francis, with its rear of burned brick:  “This is the direct descendent of the old Mission,” I told him, “the first Parish Church of San Francisco.  It was gutted by the fire and is being very gradually restored.  A notice within administers an implied rebuke:  ‘The First Erected—­the Last Restored.’”

We paused at the iron fence of the small green triangle cut off from Washington Square by the slant of Columbus Avenue, and peered at the fine bronze figure of a sinewy old man stooping to drink from his hand on the edge of the little pool.

“Mr. Cummings’ message to his universal brothers,” he commented.  “None could fail to be refreshed by it.  My strength is renewed.  Let us ascend,” and he turned up Filbert Street.

Dark-eyed women lounged in the doorways of the houses that cling to the perpendicular sides of the hill.  “The Italian pervades,” I volunteered, “but there are Greek, Sicilians, Spaniards and French.”  The whole was reminiscent of the South of Europe, but the Neapolitan scene of cleated walks and steep steps lacked the enlivening color notes of the homeland.

“Not even a red shirt on a clothes line,” I regretted, but a flood of soft voweled Italian from a woman in a third story window, musically answered by a man in the street below, brought consolation.

“The opera’s own tongue,” the Bostonian commented.

“Well, you leave it to me,” finished the man in the street.

“Sure, Mike, I will,” responded the woman.

My companion halted in consternation.

“We make American citizens of them all,” I asserted.

“Les petits enfants aussi,” I added as a child ran past, shouting a response in irreproachable English to the Parisian command of her mother.

We turned through the rude stone wall into Pioneer Park and along the unkept paths shaded by eucalyptus, cypress and acacia trees and came upon the open height where the mountain-hemmed bay lay in broad expanse before us, dotted with islands and with ferries streaking their way across its blue-gray surface.

“Wonderful,” he exclaimed under his breath.

   ’"O, Telegraft Hill, she sits proud as a Queen,
   And th’ docks lie below in th’ glare,’”

I quoted from Wallace Irwin.

He lowered his gaze to the numerous wharves running out into the water, with teams appearing and disappearing at the entrances of the covered docks, like lines of busy ants.

   “‘And th’ bay runs beyant her, all purple and green
   Wid th’ gingerbread island out there,’”