Another delightful fact of San Francisco is the Occidental Hotel. Its comfort is like that of a royal home. There is nothing inn-ish about it. Remembering the chief hotels of many places, I am constrained to say that I have never, even in New York, seen its equal for elegance of appointment, attentiveness of servants, or excellence of _cuisine_. Having come to this extreme of civilization from the extreme of barbarism, we found that it actually needed an exertion to leap from the lap of luxury, after a fortnight's pleasaunce, and take to the woods again in flannel and corduroys.
But far more seductive than the beautiful bay, the heavenly climate, the paradisiacal fruits, and the royal hotel of San Francisco, were the old friends whom we found, and the new ones we made there. With but one exception, (and that an express-company, not a man,) we were received by all our San-Francisco acquaintance in a kind and helpful manner, with a welcome and a cheer as delightful to ourselves as it was honorable to them. Need I say whose brotherly hands were among the very first outstretched to us, in whose happy home we found our sweetest rest, by whose radiant face and golden speech we were most lovingly detained evening after evening and far into the night? A few days ago when we read that dreadful message, "_Starr King is dead_," the lightning that carried it seemed to end in our hearts. We withered under it; California had lost its soul for us; at noon or in dreams that balmy land would nevermore be the paradise it once was to us. The last hand that pressed our own, when we sailed for the Isthmus on our way home, was the same that had been first to give us our California welcome. Just before the lines were cast off, Starr King stood at the door of our state-room, and said,--
"I could not bear to have you go away without one more good-bye. Here are the _cartes-de-visite_ I promised. They look hard-worked, but they look like me. Good bye! God bless you! I hope to make a visit to the East next summer, and then we will get together somewhere by the sea. Good bye!"
He went down the ladder. When the steamer glided off, his bright face sent benedictions after us as far as we could see; and then, for the last time on earth, that great, that good, that beloved man faded from our sight,--but, oh! never from our hearts, either in the here or the hereafter. "We shall see him, but not now." We shall be together with him "in the summer, by the sea"; but that summer shall have other glory than the sun to lighten it, and the sea shall be of crystal.