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- 192 REMINISCENCES OF OLD VICTORIA
dences may be of Spanish architecture with red tiled roofs which look very handsome.
I wondered at the large and handsome hotels in Pasadena, although Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego all have good hotels. In Pasadena there was the Mary-land with its pergola, a Spanish appendage covered with climbing flower vines which was very attractive; also the Green and the Raymond. There is little to be seen of the original inhabitants of this country, that is to say, of their descendants. It put me in mind of our own Indians, of the remnant of the Songhees tribe. They are all seemingly half or quarter breeds, and work as laborers for the railway company. I have already given in my boyhood experiences in San Francisco an account of a flag incident, and strange to say, I nearly had an-other in Los Angeles. One day I saw what might be an English flag flying from a high building, and the sight stirred me. So to make sure I threaded my way through the crowd for some distance and when opposite the building I walked off the sidewalk and craned my neck to look up six stories to make sure if it were really a Union Jack. Well, well ! I thought, is it up so high to protect it from molestation, or is it that they are more liberal-minded here? I felt pleased, but when I espied what turned out to be the British coat-of-arms below the flag I saw the reason why. Just then along came a motor cycle and a motor car, and in the opposite direction a street car, and I recovered myself and got out of the way in quick time. It was the office of the British Consul, and that is why it waved. I consoled myself with the thought that it was after all only a certain class of American who would not tolerate any other flag in this country but his own, and I shall try and always think this.
A VISIT TO SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA 193
We left Los Angeles and Redlands March 24th for San Francisco, where we arrived March 25th. In San Francisco I met an old Victorian, Tom Burnes, brother of William Burnes, H. M. customs. I had not seen him for years, and we started to explore the Plaza on Kearney and Washington Streets. This was the most familiar part of San Francisco to me, as I have passed through this part often as a boy. It is now known as Portman Square. I looked for the " Monumental " engine house from which I had run to fires in the early fifties. A blank space was pointed out where it had been, but the fire had destroyed this ancient landmark. In the Plaza Mr. Burnes showed me a monument to Robert Louis Stevenson, the English writer of such interesting sea stories. On the top was a ship of the time of Elizabeth, with the high poop deck, which must have represented something in one of his stories, and an inscription :
"To REMEMBER ROBERT L. STEVENSON.
" To be honest, to be kind, to earn a little, to spend a little less. To make upon the whole a family happier for his presence. To renounce when that be necessary. Not to be embittered. To keep a few friends, but those without capitulation. Above all, on the same grim condition, to keep friends with himself. Here is a task for all that man has of fortitude and delicacy."
This was erected by some admirers of the very interesting English writer who died, was it not in Samoa, so beloved by the natives.
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