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LIGHTS REMINISCENT

THE SPIRIT OF THE CARNIVAL

BY BILLEE GLYNN

C

LEAR NIGHT, the stars, vistas of colors and a million lights. Laughter, dazzle and bedeckbedeckment, and the wild joy of living. The old world and the new, North, South, the East and the West, met at last, and in a "Here's to you!" in honor of the chivalrous Don Gaspar. The old world and the new, the old San Francisco and the new, footing it bravely, beating the rush of time, toasting the brother draught -madness wiser than wisdom, Bohemianism rarer than Heaven in the city that knows no night. Women fair as Cleopatra, men perfect as Achilles, beggar and prince, clown, soldier and genius, the ragged and velvet, the hoi-polloi and the elite, but all One-Unity pulse-flamed and convention-swept-in the plunging sea of merriment, the surging, impassioned symphony that is Portola. And in all the flash, the flare, the wit, the buffoonery of the crowd. adventure-tuned and devil-may-care, a thousand incidents and sensations, the shadings of diverse elements, bizarre effects that are of its soul.

"To the devil with men's ware," yelled a hale Scotch drummer to a friend on Third and Market. "I am a poet, a genius to-night, and cannot remember that I sell socks. Just let them keep growing such women-nothing else on earth matters."

A lithe, dark-eyed thing in Mexican costume, the muscatel of Old Spain brimming her black eyes, had great difficulty in passing a fat man, one of the kind who can never hope to see his toes. "If you could ever reach me," she said, "I'd let you make love to me." The fat man reached, over-reached and fell on his knees. "Oh, Romeo!" taunted the butterfly in flight.

"Let me hear them ring, then," said a

queenly, blue-costumed creature to a seller of bells. "If they're real cow-bells, let me hear them ring-I have to deafen a man.”

"Is it your husband?" asked the seller of bells, as he shook his ware till the stars danced. "If it's your husband, and you'd like to blind him as well, I sell goggles, too."

"Should the world come to an end right now I wouldn't care," laughed one of a rollicking companionship of three-a buxom, spirited girl with a white plume in her hat. And just then she bumped into the arms of the U. S. Infantry. "And neither would I," returned the gay musketeer promptly; "but I'd rather go to the ends of the world with you." "Come on, then," she smiled. And he needed no second invitation.

"Oh, how fortunate he is!" remarked a Gibson girl in mauve silk, coming out of the Bismarck, and pointing to a very cross-eyed Chinaman standing dumbstruck at the magnificence. "He can see it in several ways, can't he?"

"Yes," said her companion, "but he is bound to have his pigtail pulled."

"Wouldn't it be fun," she meditated. Then suddenly she swooped over to pull it, became afraid and ran away again. “I wouldn't be surprised," she suggested, "if he might be our launderer. Just think if I had done it and made an enemy of him -what a chance to get back at me!"

So on up and down Market street the gay carnival spirit paraded itself, the incarnation of romance, of high spirits, and humor. And all the while confetti blinded your eyes and piled an inch deep on the sidewalk. Never was such a host, never such a revel of beauty. Out of that crowd, passing you like fair creations of your dreams, yes, and very often tickling you under the chin, and with handfuls of confetti and a smile for you-came wo

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Don Gaspar de Portola enters the city, and is escorted to Union Square.

Geary and Kearny Streets.

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Queen Virgilia on her way to meet Don Gaspar de Portola.

Evening Post, Photo.

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Mayor Taylor presents the golden key to Don Gaspar.

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Four hundred thousand visitors await the arrival of Don Gaspar de Portola.

Fourth and Market Streets.

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