The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, March 22, 1896, Page 17

THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, SUNDAY, MARCH 22, ALIFORNIA directs the world with honest pride to her glorious climate, to her flowers that never fade, to her fruits that are equaled nowhere else in beauty or quality. The land of the West excels in all these ings and more, but the goddess who sits r; the Golden Gate, the brown bear re- posing at her feet, has more reasons to ling “Eureka” than mortals in the dis- lance may have dreamed, The choicest flowers, the rarest gems of this sundown by the sea cannot be pie- fured in black or white, for what artist can faint the dew on the rose or the flash of lne diamond, and what artist can do jus- lice to the rosy freshness and the captivat- Ing graces of our California girls? TR What a delightful scene is presented of an afternoon in the summery winter or the blossom-wreathed spring when the troops of merry San Francisco maidens are lightly, laughingly, marching away from the Girls’ High School. Then and there you may behold a genuine Califor- nia picture. Knowledge looks from their eyes; their faces wear the hues and the smiles of health; they walk with graceful steps, withal as dignified and with every bit as much queenly independence as Charles Dana Gibson gives to his ideal American girl. In fact, it seems more than probable that Gibson got his ideal from a composite of the California girl. The ‘‘queenliness’” of our girls, anyhow, should be a characteristic feature. It was a bright young woman of the West who pertly explained when, instead of bowing 1896. 800 0,0,000,C,000C,C000C000000000000C0000000000000000000,0000C0000000000C0000000000C0000) i ® SAN FRANCISCO'S HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS. ; at the feet of her Royal Majesty of Eng- land and kissing the royal hand, she had stepped up to the throne-cbair and aston- 1sheg Queen Victoria by grasping her hand and shaking it heartily, and when an officious and offended man-in-waiting whispered to the young woman frowm over the sea, “Only sovereigns meet on equal terms”: “Bir, in America we are all sovereigns in our own right.” If one has ever seriously considered the questions, “Is woman qualified to vote?”’ and “What will the effect be when our sisters shall wield the franchise that vain men now monopolize?'’ there is half a so- lution in a passing study of these high school girls. One is prone to think that, fitted by intellectual qualifications, these girls might be of assistance in warding off election-day mistakes. If the rising young women all over toe land be as promising as the high school girls of San Francisco. the coming woman is near at hand. At least, she is not more than an ace away, and statesmen a few years hence need entertain no alarm at conferring the great] republican privilege on women of the day about to dawn. The San Francisco girl, as she is seen at the Girls’ High School, is of a type that poets from time immemorial have gone into ecstacies about. -It is not to be won- dered at that philosophers predict that the West is destined to be the home of art and poetry and song. All things that serve as inspirations to genius are here. Nature has lavished her bounties on us and all the surroundings here conduce to the propa- gation on these western shores of a people who shall be the envy and admiratiou of the outside world in a fature day—just as in the living present are our eternal sum- mers, our rivers in the clonds, our moun- tains that merge their blue into the blue of the sky, our giant trees, our flowery val- leys, and we may as well adopt the old nursery phrase and say our whole ‘‘land of milk and honey.” Beauty in nature is everywhere visible here, and beauty in the race will be, in a large measure, begotten by continuous contemplation of beauty in our environ- ments. 17 and wide knowledge and high cunlture in its author, and that shall be devoid of trash. These girls may restore the art of con- versation, now nearly lost, and dispiace pretense and emptiness by worth and solidity. These girls, so far as their power and in- fluence extend, may elevate the tone of society, and teach the world to respect in- tellect where it now bows down to mere pocket-book. These girls may augment the fame of California in ‘many ways, and, ‘observing Beauty of mind, beauty of face, beauty+#them as they glide down the high school of form, will be the common heritage of sterity at some time in California. Our an Francisco high school girls are exam- ples of what the future shall see through- out the West. These girls may write the ‘‘new novel” that shall be indicative of fine sentiment 1 N Whi J boal bes 3, _-veled e o a disfanceequal To nearly cigM‘ Times arovad @ lhe ear th Tis only a few years over five centu- ries since the Genoese navigator cnocked the props of ancient ignor- | 3 Knoos : | able thing for a ship to cross the sea; now ance from under the old delusions that the earth was flat and that cu- tiously inclined people who pushgd_ on far imeugh in one direction were destined to jake a tumble into eternal space from the | fagged edge of the limited square of the Vorid. An age has not elapsed iince a novelist gave to the realm M fiction a hero who was sup- posed to overstep the bounds of belief by sacing around the globe in eighty days. pnvbody with sufficient means at com- hand can achieve that kind of a record jo-day. In faet, eighty days is ral'her flow; sixty being the record of nctunluy»; md if Inventor Gresham of New York jets his submarine boat into suf:cesu!ul vorking order we may expect to journey from continent to continent, through the mighty deep, with the rapidity of a bird on the wing. Mar has tamed the ocean to a great extent. Of old it*was a remark- little pleasure yachts cross and recross | between America and Europe; and re- cently two bold navigators have planned to row from New York to Queenstown in a Whiteball boat. Think of it! A couple of Yankees scull- ing over the briny waste that the fear-in- spired crew of Columbus deemed without end. If this is done, why may we not foresee the circumnavigation of the world in a rowboat? How absurd the idea ap- pears at first. Around the great waist of the rotund earth in a mite of a row- boat! A microbe battling against a mountainous wave. Puny arms pulling a puny boat over oceans for nearly 26,000 miles! But why not? Here is the picture of a Whitehall boat- man of San Francisco Bay who has in twenty years traversed a distgnce that equals nearly eight trips around the world. Sounds strange, does1t? Listen a_while, Michael J. Fitzgerald, reporter of shirs at Meiggs wharf for the Merchants’ Ex- change, is 36 years old and bas made his home on the water, one might say, from the time he was old enough and stout enough to master an oar. For twenty {enrs he has been engaged in Whitehail oating on the bay. “My first six years were the liveliest of all,” "declared Mr. Fitzgerald. ‘‘Then ships were glw(iml, commerce brisk and freights high. The ships were hardly ever above 1400 tons register; now we get them from 3600 to 3900 tons. United Kingdom were from £3 10s to £5 the ton; now the rateis20s. It makes a big difference. During my first six years of boating the Whitehalls went out as far as the Farallon Islands or thereabouts. ‘We might eruise around for hours waiting for ships and, again, we might meet them far inside the whistling buoy. “Sometimes we might take advantage of a tow; but, as a rule, W, men, Then rates to the |’ Ai ) 474 M. J. Fitzgerald, Who Has Pulled Many Thousands of Miles in.a Whitehall Boat. frem a photogranhk : trusted to their own good arms, when sails were of no. avail, in the race for deep-sea craft. ““The Farallones are thirty miles distant from the City. The round trip would be sixty miles. "I may say, with certainty, that for fully 300 days in the year, for six years, I made one trip a day to the Far- allones and back in my Whitehall.” Si1xty miles a day, 300 days. in the year, for six years! The total distance covered 'was 108,000 miles, over four times the dis- tance around the world, in six years! “Of course,” continued Mr. Fitzgerald, “nowadays we get information of ships from the observatories outside of e Golden Gate. We now travel from ten to forty miles a day, according to the facility with which the Dbig vessels travel in the bay. For 300 days in the year twenty. miles a day would be a fair average for the fourteen years that I have held the post of reporter of ships for the Merchants’ Ex- change." 5 Twenty miles a day, 300 days in the year, for fourteen years! That makes a total distance traveled in that time of 84,000 miles. And in the twenty years of Mr. Fitzgerald’s experience he would have traveled over a grand total of 192,000 . miles—over 734 times the lengtn of a band stretched around the terrestrial sphere. ““When winds are fair,” explained Mr. Fitzgerald, *‘we run up sails, but when wind and tide are against you it means strong, hard rowing. You see, my duties are to board all incoming vessels in the in- terest of the exchange and procure the ear- liest reports of their voyage, the ships spoken, deaths at sea and copies of mani- fests of cargo. Our doors never close—it is a day and night business-with us, and it's all the same, sun or shade, fair or foul, blow hig‘h, blow low, the lookout never ceases. In thick, foggy weather, when captains are perplexed on entering the harbor, the Whitehall boatis doubly wel- come for the reassurance that it brings. In all my boating career I have been upeet only once—that was alongside the ill- fated ship Elizabeth when she went down in a southeast gale off the north heads about five years ago. For fifteen minutes 1 clung to the upturned boat before assist- snce came, ] have saved twenty-fie lives steps and march healthfully away, one is led to think that, enjoying the benefits of our excellent system of education, there is nota doubt but that these girls will fulfill the lofty and bright hopes for their future that every good citizen is happy to nur- ture in his heart. during my service here, and I'm proud of that record, I guess. “The Whitehall boat that I use is 19 feet long with 3 feet 8 inches beam. In day- time anybody-can see ships, but it is not such a pleasant position to be out in the bay at night in rain and blow in a lonely boat, watching over the waves for each and every spark'of light. In dense fogsthe work is fraught with many difficulties. A sailing: vessel at night has only a green light on the starboard side and a red light on the. port side. You stand with your ass till you catch a glimpse of those hts; then offfyou goin your Whitehall As soon asyou get the ship’s name no time is lost in qenlnglthe information to the Merchants’ Exchange, which informs the consignees and wires the arrival to all parts of the world. Coastwise vessels carry manifests for the exchange, and thesc are rushed uptown from the ‘wharf by horse. People in_ general never think of the trouble and the perils that have secured the few lines of shipping intelligence which they scan in the morning papers at the breakfast table—the lines especially that tell of arrivals in the night. “T suppose we 5:1: an average of about twenty vessels a day all the year round. On extraordinary days we have as high as from forty to fifty.” Twenty-five thousand miles around the globe! Two-thirds of that distance cov- ered by a Whitehall boat each ycar for six years! . Mr. Fitzgerald is ruddy and robust and young-looking. It may easily be pre- dicted that, before he lays by the oars and retires ‘to an' easy old age among the less venturesome landsmen, he will have trayersed in ‘his Whiteball a distance which, if measured by a continuous line, would’ permit of that line being tied around the earth, stretched thence to the moon and there made secure by a turn or two about the silvery orb of night. SANEBORN, Vail & Co. have new goods all over their store. Don’t think of old styles or old prices. What $1 used to buy 50 cents will b uy now. They have stacksof new and bl:.\llgnl,mnn in {nut\ufl. frames, artists’ mmaterials, leather goods, stationery, lamps and shades, actificial lowers and tollet articles.®