Imagine then the
concern of the staid commuters from Oakland and Alameda to say nothing
of the citizens of Berkeley and Marin County, to find themselves being
borne away from their vegetable gardens and fresh eggs out to sea in a
wooden boat.
I suppose there are many people living right here in San Francisco who
have never sailed away out of the Golden Gate, people who have been
bound economically or by love or duty, and have had to ply like the
ferry daily between two given points. But can there be a man who has
seen tall-masted schooners and long-bodied ocean-going steamers pass in
and out of the alluring Golden Gate, and has never longed to sail away
to the enchanted South Seas, or to Alaska. Such a man is not a man any
more than the ferry is a boat.
If I could choose the boat I'd sail away upon, it would not be a
coast-wise steamer, nor the prim Alaska packers nor even the steamers to
the Orient. I'd choose me a four-masted schooner, carrying freight and
going somewhere, anywhere, no one knows where. And then some day the
wind would die or some night the wind would howl and there would come to
me a great longing for or a ferry that should take me home at night in a
safe and prosaic manner.
A Whiff of Acacia
In Connecticut now, and in Illinois and in Utah too, it is lilac time.
Lilac time - I'll stop, if you please, to say the words over lovingly.
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