we, puny visitors, turn up our coat-collars and flee to the shelter of the “trailer” or covered car.  As we come over “Nob Hill” we take in the size of the houses of the Californian millionaires, note that they are of wood (on account of the earthquakes?), and bemoan the misdirected efforts of their architects, who, instead of availing themselves of the unique chance of producing monuments of characteristically developed timber architecture, have known no better than to slavishly imitate the incongruous features of stone houses in the style of the Renaissance.  Indeed, we shall feel that San Francisco is badly off for fine buildings of all and every kind.  If daylight still allows we may visit the Mission Dolores, one of the interesting old Spanish foundations that form the origin of so many places in California, and if we are historically inclined we may inspect the old Spanish grants in the Surveyor-General’s office.  Those of us whose tastes are modern and literary may find our account in identifying some of the places in R.L.  Stevenson’s “Ebb Tide,” and it will go hard with us if we do not also meet a few of his characters amid the cosmopolitan crowd in the streets or on the wharves.  At night we may visit China without the trouble of a voyage, and perambulate a city of 25,000 Celestials under the safe guidance of an Irish-accented detective.  So often have the features of Chinatown been described—­its incense-scented joss-houses, its interminable stage-plays, its opium-joints, its drug-stores with their extraordinary remedies, its curiosity shops, and its restaurants—­that no repetition need be attempted here.  We leave it with a sense of the curious incongruity which allows this colony of Orientals to live in the most wide-awake of western countries with an apparently almost total neglect of such sanitary observances as are held indispensable in all other modern municipalities.  It is certain that no more horrible sight could be seen in the extreme East than the so-called “Hermit of Chinatown,” an insane devotee who has lived for years crouched in a miserable little outhouse, subsisting on the offerings of the charitable, and degraded almost beyond the pale of humanity by his unbroken silence, his blank immobility, and his neglect of all the decencies of life.  And this is an American resident, if not an American citizen!  If the reader is as lucky as the writer, he may wind up the day with a smart shock of earthquake; and if he is equally sleepy and unintelligent (which Heaven forefend!), he may miss its keen relish by drowsily wondering what on earth they mean by moving that very heavy grand piano overhead at that time of night.