We saunter up Clay, passing Burr’s Savings Bank and a few remaining stores, to Kearny, and Portsmouth Square, whose glory is departing.  The City Hall faces it, and so does Exempt Engine House, but dentists’ offices and cheap theaters and Chinese stores are crowding in.  Clay Street holds good boarding-houses, but decay is manifest.  We pass on to Stockton, still a favorite residence street; turning south we pass, near Sacramento, the church in which Starr King first preached, now proudly owned by the negro Methodists.  At Post we reach Union Square, nearly covered by the wooden pavilion in which the Mechanics’ Institute holds its fairs.  Diagonally opposite the southeast corner of the desecrated park are the buildings of the ambitious City College, and east of them a beautiful church edifice always spoken of as “Starr King’s Church.”

Very likely, seeing the church, I might be reminded of one of Mr. King’s most valued friends, and suggest that we call upon him at the Golden Gate Flour-mill in Pine Street, where the California Market was to stand.  If we met Horace Davis, I should feel that I had presented one of our best citizens.

Dinner presents many opportunities; but I am inclined to think we shall settle on Frank Garcia’s restaurant in Montgomery near Jackson, where good service awaits us, and we may hear the upraised voices of some of the big lawyers who frequent the place.  For the evening we have the choice between several bands of minstrels, but if Forrest and John McCullough are billed for “Jack Cade” we shall probably call on Tom Maguire.  After the strenuous play we pass up Washington Street to Peter Job’s and indulge in his incomparable ice-cream.

On Sunday I shall continue my guidance.  Churches are plentiful and preachers are good.  In the afternoon I think I may venture to invite my friend to The Willows, a public garden between Mission and Valencia and Seventeenth and Nineteenth streets.  We shall hear excellent music in the open air and can sit at a small table and sip good beer.  I find such indulgence far less wicked than I had been led to believe.

When there is something distinctive in a community a visitor is supposed to take it in, and in the evening we attend the meeting of the Dashaway Association in its own hall in Post Street near Dupont.  It numbers five thousand members and meets Sunday mornings and evenings.  Strict temperance is a live issue at this time.  The Sons of Temperance maintain four divisions.  There are besides two lodges of Good Templars and a San Francisco Temperance Union.  And in spite of all this the city feels called upon to support a Home for Inebriates at Stockton and Chestnut streets, to which the supervisors contribute two hundred and fifty dollars a month.