By the Golden Gate eBook

Joseph M. Carey
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 189 pages of information about By the Golden Gate.

By the Golden Gate eBook

Joseph M. Carey
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 189 pages of information about By the Golden Gate.

The cosmopolitan character of San Francisco is further indicated by the names of foreign countries and places which some of her streets bear.  Here we note in our walks the names of Denmark and Japan, Honduras and Montenegro, Trinidad, Venezuela and Valencia, and also the Spanish town De Haro.  Certain names also of cities tell us whence people have come to the City of the Golden Gate.  We find an Albany, an Austin, and a Chattanooga street.  There are also streets called Erie, Hartford, Vicksburg and York, San Jose and Santa Clara, while Fair Oaks speaks of one of the great battlefields of the Civil War.  Some of the counties of the State have also fixed their names on the streets as Butte, El Dorado, Mariposa, Napa, Solano and Sonoma.  The Potomac River has a name here also, while Sierra and Shasta represent the mountains.  There are names of streets besides which take us among the trees and shrubs, such as the Cedar, the Locust, the Linden, the Oak, the Walnut, the Willow, the Ivy, the Laurel and the Myrtle.  Of flowers there is a profusion in San Francisco.  They bloom on every hand; and wherever there is a bit of ground or lawn in front of a house there you will see plants or flowers in blossom.  Fuschias attain the height of ten feet in some places and are magnificent in the colour and beauty of their flowers.  The heliotrope climbs up its support with eagerness and its blossoms vie in hue with the blue skies.  You may also see the pink flowers of the Malva plant in abundance, the chaste mignonette and the Australian pea-vine.  The latter is a favourite and clothes the bare walls of fence or house or trellis with a robe of beauty which queens might envy.  Roses are rich and fragrant, white and pink chiefly, and delight the eye, no matter which way you turn.  The Acacia grows here in San Francisco as if it were native to the soil; and the Monterey Cypress, green and beautiful, makes a handsome hedge, or, when given room and air, it attains to stately proportions.  Here also you will find the Eucalyptus tree in its perfection, stately in form with its ivy-green foliage, and you look upon it with an admiring eye.  California may be truly called a land of flowers as well as a land of fruits; and we err not in judgment when we say that close association with these beautiful products of the earth has a refining and an uplifting influence on the human heart.  A man who has love for a flower is brought near to the Lord of the flowers, Who said as He walked over the meadows of Palestine—­“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow.”  So they have their sweet message of love and gentleness and peace for all, yes, these “stars of the earth,” as the poet calls them.  Such thoughts come to you as you gaze on the rich gardens of San Francisco and note their wealth of bright blossoms, brightening man’s life and filling his soul with poetry and sentiment and longing for the beautiful and for the good.

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Project Gutenberg
By the Golden Gate from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.