women,

men, a thousand types of superbly lovely and different that in the throbbing thought of the whole of them you could not remember a single one. But eyes eyes untold as a bank's gold pieces, but rare as the gems of India-came back to haunt you, and you wondered when you would ever look into them again. And if there were plainer faces, too, as among the true cavaliers there were also plainer men, the occasion lit and transformed them all; and personality and eccentricity, piquant and zestful as the tang of old champagne, ran an equal tilt with the attractions of beauty. Even did one hear adopted the courtly language and manners of the days of chevaliers. And why not, since Don Gaspar lives again!

A golden-haired girl, who might have been the goddess Circe, touched a Spanish Don on the shoulder, and pointed to a brigand seller of confetti.

"For the honor of a lady," she said, "would you not dare to steal?"

"Or buy?" he suggested, doffing his sombrero to the ground.

"But stolen things are sweetest, and it is a woman's whim."

"Ah!" he sighed, looking in her face. "Stolen things are the sweetest, and I would dare anything for something." He turned and snatched three small sacks of confetti and darted back into the crowd. She hurriedly followed, laughing in gay delight. Then they were lost to view. The modern mode of romance and expression, however, goes just as well. The uniforms of Germany, Great Britain, Holland, Italy, Japan and Russia, soldiers of fortune of the present day, and daring and chivalrous as well, dotted the throng bizarrely, and eye after eye turned to look after them. And handsome, bronze fellows of the sea, free and roaming as the waves they ride upon, who wouldn't look after them.

"I never loved a Dutchman before," exclaimed a shop girl, casting her eyes back at a straight-limbed lieutenant. But he did not understand her language.

A woman of forty-five, perhaps, with Titian hair, had gone clean back to her saucy, vigorous youth. Her tickler brushed everything from sixty to eighteen the length of Market street. And always And always

she sighed to the woman beside her: "Such a night!"

It is remarkable, but a fact, that the blind man at the Pacific Building was actually caught smiling. tually caught smiling. And a man of over fifty found himself singing "Sweet Sixteen" and paying addresses to his

wife.

The country youth come to town was at his friskiest, though the spirit of Don Gaspar had quite made a gentleman of him; and the country maiden, at first shy, expanded to the occasion like a poppy laughing to sunlight.

Then think of the willowy, slender feminine whom laughter bent gracefully double and back again; the sturdy, athletic one who forced her way with a square but pretty hand, and a glint of magnetic eyes under Turkish brows; the slim, fragile thing, dainty as a jessamine bud, whom the crowd smothered, and who allowed herself to be rescued gratefully-or in a perfect storm of confetti cried "Help! Help!" Somewhat subdued in the throng the romantic-eyed girl looked ever questioningly in the eyes that went with the epaulettes on a uniform; and the dazzling, brilliant creature of fire and daredark-haired or of shimmering goldswooped hither and thither and thought of everything, an Ariel of mischief. while men led the attack, as men always must, beauty was mistress of the occasion, and the privileges of Don Gaspar appropriately belong to the romance of a California night. In the words of the harlequin, whose long hair a madcap bunch of girls filled with confetti on the corner of Fourth street, stopping his speech. "The very best of our joys are those we take freely and without stint. To have one brimming draught is better than to have sipped a fountain."

For

All evening one old lady and her husband sat on a box on the corner of Stockton, holding hands and smiling. At intervals they would turn and remark to each other: "It reminds one of New Orleans," or "It is just like New Orleans, sweetheart?" Unconsciously they had back to the endearing language of their youth. A term they had used perhaps in some long-lost but never-to-be-forgotten Mardi Gras in the South.

gone

N THE EVENING of March 20, 1909, the freight steamer, R. D. Inman, was run on the rocks near Duxbury Reef, about fourteen miles from San Francisco. "Negligent and unskillful navigation" caused the disaster.

The ship was abandoned as a total loss, and the insurance being promptly paid, the underwriters took possession and made a salvage contract with the Whitelaw Wrecking Company, who set up a camp on the beach and began work at once.

When we first caught sight of the Inman she appeared to be in perfect condition, except for a slight list to "port," but on approaching nearer we could see that she was stuck fast on a rock, the lower portion of her hull actually cut in two, and her stern sunk so that at high