[Gutenberg 6076] • The Legends of San Francisco

My San Francisco on her seven hills is smiling, beside an opalescent sunset sea; there is a magic in her bracing air beguiling, yet filling all with tireless energy. The tingling tang of open sea the breeze is giving; the fog rolls in and drives heat languors out, and thrills her loyal subjects with the joy of living, and puts the love of idleness to rout.

When in the valleys, fervent summer heat oppresses, and gives no respite night or day, there is a City that the cooling fog caresses, upon the breezy San Francisco Bay. When winter rains and sun have wrought in fragrant flowers a multicolored carpet on the land, a charm is in her circling hills and redwood bowers that only those who see can understand.

She has a mystic charm in all the changing seasons—a lure that brings the stranger to her door, and in these pages I will give the Indian's reasons for charms and lures, never told before. The legends of the hills, the fog, the gulls, the waters idealize the beautiful and true; allow me, therefore, California's Native Daughters, to dedicate this book of verse to you.