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Show No Other Place Will Do. Some people say: "The men of San Francisco had better select some other site for a city and get away from memories so cruel." There 4s no more-beautiful description "or a landscape anywhere than Ruskin's picture of the Jura range. It begins with these words: "It is a spot which has all the solemnity, with none of the savageness, of the Alps; where there is a sense of a great power beginning to be manifested in the earth, and of a deep and majestic concord in the rise of the long, low lines of piny hills; the first utterances of those mighty mountain symphonies, soon to be more loudly lifted and wildly broken along the battlements of .the Alps." That goes on increasing in power and sweetness sweet-ness and beauty for two pages, and then changes to say: "The writer well remembers the sudden blanlmess and chill- which were' cast upon it when he endeavored, in order more strictly to arrive at the sources of its impressiveness, to imagine it, for a moment, a scene in some aboriginal abor-iginal forest of the New Continent. The flowers in an instant lost their light, the river its music; the hills became oppressively desolate; a heaviness heavi-ness In the boughs of the darkened forest showed how much of their former power had been dependent de-pendent upon a life which was not theirs, how much of the glory of the imperishable or continually contin-ually reserved, creation is reflected from things more precious In their memories than it, in their renewing. Those ever springing flowers and ever flowing streams had been dyed by the deep colors of human endurance, valor and virtue." That makes clear why no other site will suit the men of the old San Francisco for a new city. The old memories clothe it with a loveliness which other eyes cannot see; the valor of the old days Is still like an echo upon its hills, and that heroism which, putting every selfish thought be-hind be-hind it and which carried its burdens without plaint to the last; that is in the eyes of the race whose homes were there, and so no other site will do. They have a habit of calling up the great names which in the past made the city Illustrious; they could never call them on any other spot. Baker, Broderick, Star King, Scott, King a thousand thou-sand more, great orators, great lawyers, great clergymen, great men of affairs, great industrial kings, great scholars, great pioneers that laid the foundations of the city and worked and watched until it became a glory of the earth. No other spot will suit those men. There are memories no earthquake can shake down; recollections that no fire can consume, and mere sand-hills can be so incorporated in the lives of men that they cannot be separated. San Francisco will have to be rebuilt on the old site, and our belief is that were there not a dollar to come from the outside, those descendants of the old invincible race would unaided build It there, though it might require as long a time as has elapsed since the argonauts first spread their tents there and began with songs and with hopes that knew no dampening, to lay the foundations of the state. |