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HE GREAT Festival of Portola has come and gone, and San Francisco has received another big boost. It has proclaimed itself the great American city of gaiety, and it has advertised itself and its rehabilitation as no other city ever has. Its re-birth is flaunted to the world in great big letters of yellow and red. It has been a notification of resumption of business at the old stand and on a bigger scale than ever before.

The affairs of the Overland Monthly have been more and more successful ever since the big fire, and the same may be said of the business ventures of all of those in the city by the Golden Gate. While this magazine has had a vast increase in subscriptions, it has also had quite a large increase in advertising patronage. It has ever been a policy of the management not to make a too strenuous campaign for advertising, as it was preferable to allow the patronage to the advertiser to speak for itself.

The new era for San Francisco begins with this year, and every recurrent season when the great crowds will be called here it will be with the same idea in view of presenting a united front to the world at large, and to relax for a week from business cares and advertise at the same time the benefits of climate and locality. San Francisco has entered upon a period of industrial activity the like of which it has never before experienced. The State at large is more easily reached through the expansion of existing railroad systems, and the new railroad lines that are planned, and being completed, will give to San Francisco a network of feeders not equaled, even by Chicago. California has entered upon a manufacturing era, and the production in iron, steel and cement. will increase by leaps and bounds, and the boom period of 1906 will be shadowed by

that of 1910, which will probably be the most prosperous of all years until that of the opening of the Panama Canal. What wonder is it, then, that people, who are desirous of keeping abreast of the times, are subscribing more and more to the Overland Monthly, with a view to knowing the Great Big West?

What wonder is it that following in the tide of subscription we find the advertiser waking to the fact that the Western magazine is the magazine to reach the West? Gradually the man of business, the wise man of the East, is making the discovery that the Eastern-published magazine of immense circulation is only represented by hundreds in the West, where the Overland Monthly has thousands. Gradually, too, the advertiser is coming to know the fact that there is only one legitimate magazine published in the West, and that it is the Overland Monthly. But this is overmuch boasting, and I am not given to it, so let us to our muttons gang.

I was saying that the Portola business had been good for San Francisco, and it was forcibly brought to my mind by the statement of a San Jose banker that one of the Native Sons' celebrations in that city had temporarily swelled the deposits. in the banks by about $300,000, and that each and every one of the "natives” attending the yearly celebration, usually, has ten dollars in his pocket; that is, he averages ten dollars per celebrant. Thirtythousand visited San Jose. Now, mark this. As soon as the celebration was on in full force, the original increase in deposits decreased, but not to the original level by many thousands, and then before the celebration was over, the figure mounted up again and did not decrease perceptibly until after the departure of the visiting native sons and daughters.

If that were so of San Jose, with thirty thousand visitors, it must be a tremen

dous help to San Francisco to have had over one million and a half guests in one week. To compute the matter, according to the San Jose figures, would run the money spent in the city during the week into such a fabulous sum as to make the head swim. It is certain that a tremendous loosening of the pocket-book took place. Ten million would be the minimum estimate of the public's expenditure.

As I was going down the trail from my mountain home, the other day, I ran across a Portuguese who has been doing some gardening work for me for some time, and his remarks on the political slumps in American cities is worth reproducing:

"In my country I was what you call a politick-not such a politick what blows up people, but I lak to leeft dem by the reading, the education, what you call? I been here now twenty year, yas sare! I mak study American costumbre. I fi-ah-nd that you peoples are much de same as in Portugal or Roosia. You have de genYou have de gentleman's and you have de peasant, waht you call? You have the gentle and the a-roff, what you call? I tal you de store -in ma country there be a man who was of the roff, the peasant, waht you call eh? The professores at the Ooniversity Lisbon they tak him and they wash heem wid de a-soap for a-twenty day. He was ver' dirty, this peasant roff. After het After he clean the professores make de waht you call de experiment with the roff peasant-waht you call-eh? They buy him plenty good clothes and they put the silka hat on hees head and de a-glova on hees han'. Then the professore stand by and look at their work-a. Then he speak-a. Then the professore they mosh surprise because he still the roff, and he say he feel like a hal an' he want a hees ole clothes and his ole dirt. Ees de same way wiv de American ceety. They like de reforma, but you jus' give a-heem de chance an' a-when you no looking eet is a-de dive back in de dirta and de bad. An' den how de enjoy de roff and de dirt no man can tella you because you gentle and you no onderstan'! De big ceety mos have the bad and de dirt or they no happy, an' hit ees so all over the world, in every country ees de same-the roff and de gentle."

And my Portuguese friend wobbles off up the trail, wagging his wise old head as he goes, which goes to prove that he is a fine philosopher himself. Some day I'm going to have that horny-handed son-ofthe-man-with-the-hoe to dinner, and I am going to enjoy myself as no man ever hath.

I have just received a brochure from the press of the Journal of Eugenics, written by M. Harman. Its title is Conventional Marriage, Why I Oppose it! This is most interesting, in view of the fact that Mr. Harman, by his own confession, is far beyond the age when any active participation in the joys and the despairs of married life may weary the mind and the body. This white-haired old relic raises a howl against monogamy on the ground that some men and some women have been tied for life, or until a convenient divorce court has sundered the ties that were brutalizing in effect, to objectionable partners. Mr. Harman is somewhere near the eighty year mark in his dotage, and his mind should dwell on more settled states than matrimony, but the old codger is energetic, to say the least, and here is one of the least objectionable of the remarks of this hoary-headed old reformer:

"As to monogamy-voluntary monogamy, a very different thing from marriage-under the reign of love, freedom and wisdom, there will be an opportunity for intelligent comparison, and if monogamy proves itself the fittest it will survive; otherwise it will give way to something better. better. What that something would or could be cannot be told until a fair comparison is possible."

Reform under any other name would smell sweeter. To those who have not the price to buy a Boccacio I would commend the latest effort of one M. Harman.

Mr. Harman's proposition may best be put into few words, and all those in favor of a wholesale and international breaking down of marriage ties and the trial all around of affinities and polygamy, for a stated period of time, hold up their hands! hands! Mr. Harman is certainly going some for such an old duffer.

A magazine management in the East

ern States sends out a warning to the effect that people must not be gulled into lending money to fakers who pretend that they are related to celebrities in the literary world. This is a most remarkable evidence of the insanity of the faker and the crass credulity of the one imposed upon by such stories. Why, everybody knows that to be related to a literary light is a patent to poverty. It is preposterous to suppose that any one short of a detention home for the feeble minded would loan money on any such story of relationship.

If the fakers originated the idea that they were related to the publisher of a magazine, there might be some sense in taking that as a guarantee of payment on a loan, for there are a few millionaire publishers, and some that are worth in the hundreds of thousands, but to claim consanguinity with the writer or the editor in the hope of securing a loan is the sheerest idiocy.

Speaking of fakers makes me think of the paternalism of the great American Government. It is now making an attempt to save the good public from being gold-bricked by the well-known "Spanish swindle."

The Department of State, at Washington, has received a report from the American Consul-General at Barcelona, Spain, in regard to the band of swindlers operating in various towns and cities in Spain, who make a practice of writing to persons in the United States respecting the imprisonment of a relative and the guardianship of a child.

The Consul-General states that the alleged prisoner generally describes himself as a political prisoner from Cuba; he is at the point of death and has but one friend-the prison priest-through whose good offices he is enabled to smuggle an occasional letter out of the prison fort.

The prisoner is rich. He has a fortune. in cash on deposit in the United States, but the certificate of deposit is concealed in a secret receptable of his valise; the valise itself has been taken possession of by the court at Carthagena, which tried. and condemned him, and will be held until the prisoner or his representative has satisfied the costs of the trial. The prisoner

has an only daughter; dying in his prison, his sole thought is of this beloved offspring. He has no friend or relative in Spain to whose care he can commit her. In this emergency his thoughts turn to the distant relative in the United States, whom he has never seen and of whom he knows only through hearsay or the family tree. Will the distant relative assume the guardianship of the darling daughter, and the darling daughter's fortune of about $30,000? If the distant relative accepts the trust, one-fourth of the prisoner's entire fortune will be the material reward. The good priest will go at once to the United States and take the darling daughter with him. There is but one condition: the ready money which the prisoner brought with him to Spain has been exhausted; the distant relative is therefore requested to send enough to liberate the valise containing the secret receptacle and the certificate of deposit. This money is to be sent to the good priest at an address indicated, and, having received it, the good priest will at once secure the valise and start for America, the "land of the free and the home of the brave," with the darling daughter.

The above is generally the first letter of the series. It is quickly followed by another in which the prisoner pathetically states that his strength is rapidly failing, and the end is near. He beseeches his dear distant relative to assume the trust and be a loving father to the darling daughter. The third letter is from the good priest himself, who in brief, touching terms, and hopelessly bad English, announces the death of the unhappy prisoner; the good priest adds that the darling daughter is under his care. He is ready to put his promise into execution. and start for the United States as soon as he shall have received the necessary funds from the distant relative. The good priest frequently incloses with his letter a bogus newspaper clipping announcing the death in prison at Barcelona of the famous Cuban patriot (sometimes called Augustin Lafiente); the newspaper notice also speaks cunningly of the confiscated valise and the darling daughter.

It is a simple scheme, but presented in such a plausible way almost any unsuspecting "distant relative" of European extraction would be more or less deceived by

the glad prospect of falling heir to the agreeable custody of a darling daughter with a big fortune, and a one-fourth interest therein as an additional recompense. Naturally the first impulse of the distant relative is to ask a lawyer or a judge or some authority what course he ought to pursue in the premises, but as he thinks of doing this his attention is taken by the warning in the prisoner's letter beseeching him not to mention the matter to any living soul lest the secret of the valise and the hidden receptacle be indiscreetly betrayed. The valise, after all, with its concealed certificate of deposit, is the key to the situation and possession must be taken of it before anything can be done or said. This (so cunningly set forth by the prisoner) is very evident to the distant relative, and so he quite frequently preserves the secret intact, and instead of consulting a lawyer or writing to the American Consul-General at Barcelona he quietly sends a draft for the sum demanded to the good priest and awaits results. Of course he waits in vain, and the poor, dead prisoner and the good priest and the darling daughter in the course of time pass out of his life forever, leaving him only an uncomfortable memory of the money he so cheerfully contributed to the confidence game.

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For nearly twenty years these knaves have been practicing their swindle, and it is needless to suggest that they are very carefully organized; they have confederates not only in the United States but in most other countries. The confederates in question select a man and find out all they can about him; they get hold of family names, family origin and family characteristics. This information is transmitted to the rascals in Spain, and letters are at once written to the prospective victim. The scheme is presented and developed in a very plausible way, and many of our fellow-countrymen have bitten promptly and cheerfully.

Under the Spanish laws a felony must be consummated before the police may act, and a mere attempt to obtain money. by false pretenses does not appear to warrant arrest. The money must be actually paid over and the prosecuting witness must be present in propria persona to testify; otherwise prosecution would be useless.

Recently the letters written to the distant relative have varied somewhat from the original; the political prisoner having become a noted Russian banker who absconded, leaving a deficit of some millions of roubles, killed in a quarrel in England another Russian, and finally took refuge in Spain, where he was apprehended and charged with manslaughter.

This change of character, however, is immaterial, and in the future more new characters will probably be introduced by the gang. The scheme is the same, and the public is warned to place no credence in such or similar letters.

Every indication points to a revival of the effort to open up the race tracks all over the country. Since it has not been found feasible to foster the gambling game by the opening of race tracks at Tia Juana on the West Coast and at Kingston, Jamaica, on the East Coast, and because the registration of the whispering bet is fraught with all sorts of difficulties and in many instances with actual loss of stake money, the owners of tracks and horses have decided to make an open fight against the laws of New York and of California, and by refuge to the technical construction of sentences attempt nullify the will of the people. A simultaneous effort to circumvent the clear letter of the law will be made in the States mentioned by the avowed representatives of the big race trusts. It remains to be seen whether the courts will give a reading of the law according to the behests of the racing men.

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While it is doubted that any such surrender by the courts may occur, it must be admitted that all over the land the pendulum has swung the other way, and that, temporarily, at least, the forces of evil are in the saddle. More than any other cause for this change of public opinion is that of the vituperative militant persecution of all opposition by the forces of the unco guid. Our public is never sane. It is always Anglo-Saxon in language and Latin in temperament, and no great reform movement is ever of long duration. It may be counted upon to change within certain limits within an exactly prescribed time, and the wise ones who make or mar us through our political fallacies know the