By FRANCES E. WILLARD, President National W. C. T. U.

No. II.—SAN FRANCISCO SILHOUETTES.

This city is the whispering gallery of all nations. In Constantinople the clamor of tongues is bewildering, while here it is more harmonious, more representative. Here you have a polyglot at the Golden Gate, a universal language. In the east there is no fusion; in the west one better understands Tennyson’s vision of all earth’s banners furled

“In the parliament of man, the federation of the world.”

Of all places on the globe, go to the California metropolis if you would feel the strong pulse of internationalism. Few have caught its rhythm, as yet, but we must do so if we would be strong enough to keep step with that matchless, electric twentieth century soon to go swinging past. You can almost hear his resonant step on San Francisco pavements; his voice whispers in the lengthening telephone, saying, “Yesterday was good, to-day is better, but to-morrow shall be the red-letter day of all life’s magic calendar.” I have always been impatient of our planet’s name—“the earth.” What other, among the shining orbs has a designation so insignificant? That we have put up with it so long is a proof of the awful inertia of the aggregate mind, almost as surprising as our endurance of the traffic in alcoholic poison. With Jupiter and Venus, Orion and the Pleiades smiling down upon us in their patronizing fashion, we have been contented to inscribe on our visiting cards: “At Home: The Earth!” Out upon such paucity of language. “The dust o’ the ground” forsooth! That answered well enough perhaps for a dark-minded people who never even dreamed they were living on a star. Even now an army of good folks afraid of the next thing, just because it is the next, and not the last, will doubtless raise holy hands of horror against the proposition I shall proceed to launch forth for the first time, though it is harmless as the Pope’s bull against the comet. They will probably oppose me, too, on theologic grounds, for, as Coleridge hath it,

“Time consecrates, and what is gray with age becomes religion.”

Nevertheless, since we do inhabit a star, I solemnly propose we cease to call it a dirt heap, and being determined to “live up to my light,” I hereby bring forward and clap a patent upon the name

CONCORDIA.

“I move it as a substitute for the original motion,” and call the previous question on “the Parliament of Man”—aforesaid by the English Laureate. By the same token, I met half a dozen selectest growths of people in San Francisco who, in the broadest, international way are doing more to make this name Concordia descriptive, rather than prophetic in its application to our oldest home, than any other people I can name. They work among the Chinese, Japanese, and “wild Arabs of the Barbary Coast,” they go with faces that are an epitomized gospel, and preach to the stranger within the Golden Gate that he is a stranger no more; they bring glad tidings of good which shall be to all people, for to them, as to their Master, “there is neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, male nor female in Christ Jesus.”

Look at this unique group photographed upon the sensitive plate of memory by “your special artist.” A tall Kentuckian of the best type; “much every way;” “big heart, big head, fine, clear-cut countenance, blue, scrutinizing eyes, large form, wrapped in an ample overcoat, its pockets full of scientific temperance documents,” this is Dr. R. H. McDonald, President of the Pacific Bank, Prohibition candidate for Governor, and temperance leader “on the coast.” Go with me to his elegant home; see his mother, fair and beaming at eighty-four; and his talented sons, who, though educated largely abroad, have never tarnished their fine physiques with the alcoholic or nicotine poisons. Go to the “Star Band of Hope Hall” on Sunday afternoon and hear his accomplished daughter sing to the little street Arabs of the society, while the Doctor presides over the meeting and introduces the eastern temperance worker, your correspondent and her secretary, Miss Anna Gordon, after whose speeches he presents each dear little child to us, patting them on the head, whispering words of praise for each, and emptying his great pockets of goodies and children’s literature. Remember that he has heart and hand open for every good work; know that he has a fortune of seven millions, and pray heaven to send us more wealthy men with wealthy hearts. Beside him stands a small, plain looking man with a royal gray eye; a man of quiet manners, terse, vigorous style, and cultured English utterances, a former sea-captain, who in the ports of China and Japan, as well as Boston and Liverpool, has succeeded in keeping his crew sober, and in teaching them to lay up their money; a gifted head and loyal heart he has; witness his editorials in The Rescue and his leadership in founding the great Orphan’s Home at Vallejo in the suburbs (both paper and orphanage being conducted by the Good Templars, whose most gifted members are Will D. Gould, the genial lawyer of Los Angeles, Mrs. Emily Pitt Stevens, the best temperance lecturers on the coast, Mrs. M. E. Corigdon, of Mariposa, and Geo. B. Katzenstein, of Sacramento). Very different in method, though one in aim with the two men I have described, is another redoubtable champion of every good cause, Rev. Dr. M. C. Briggs, who is like a tower “that stands four-square to every wind that blows.” Observe that well-knit figure, those herculean shoulders, that dauntless face, and it will go without saying that this man is nature’s model of the Methodist pioneer, to whom all hardships are but play; who has a sledge hammer blow for evil doers, but a brother’s clasp for the repentant; a man whose deep, musical voice in the palmy days of his prime gave wings to such rhetoric and such argument as combined with the speeches of Starr King and Col. Baker, to save California to the Union. Near the gifted Dr. Briggs stand his life-time friends and allies, Captain and Mrs. Charles Goodall, the former our Methodist MecÆnus in California, founder of the famous “Oregon Navigation Company,” and the true type of a Christian layman, his heart and home open to all who come in the name of the Master whom he loves with the simplicity and fondness of the child. A tall, dark-eyed, impressive man, in life’s full prime, comes next. “See Otis Gibson, or you have missed the moral hero of Gold-opolis”—this was concurrent testimony coming from every side. Garfield left no truer saying than that the time wants men “who have the courage to look the devil squarely in the face and tell him that he is the devil.” Precisely this fearless sort of character is Rev. Otis Gibson. He has been the uncompromising friend of “the heathen Chinee,” through all that pitiful Celestial’s grievous fortunes on our western shore. When others cursed he blessed; while others pondered he prayed; what was lacking in schools, church, counsel and kindness he supplied. It cost something thus to stand by a hated and traduced race in spite of hoodlum and Pharisee combined. But Otis Gibson could not see why the people to whom we owe the compass and the art of printing, the choicest porcelain, the civil service examination might not christianize as readily on our shores as their own. In this faith he and his noble wife have worked on until they have built up a veritable city of refuge for the defenceless and despairing, in the young and half barbarous metropolis of the Pacific slope. We went to a wedding in this attractive home, where a well-to-do young Chinaman was married to a modest, gentle Chinese girl, rescued from a life of untold misery and sin by this blessed Christian home. Contrary to popular opinion, a chorus of Chinese made very tolerable music, and while a Celestial played one of Sankey’s hymns, stately Mrs. Capt. Goodall, the generous friend and patron saint of the establishment, escorted the bride, and after a simple service (with the word “obey” conspicuously left out), the large circle of invited philanthropists was regaled on the refreshments made and provided for such entertainments.

We afterward visited the “Chinese Quarter,” so often described, under escort of Rev. Dr. Gibson. We saw the theaters where men sit on the back and put their feet on the board part of the seat; where actors don their costumes in full sight of the audience, and frightful pictured dragons compete with worse discord for supremacy. We saw the joss-house, with swinging censer and burning incense, tapers and tawdriness, a travesty of the Catholic ceremonial, taking from the latter its one poor merit of originality. We saw a mother and child kneeling before a hideous idol, burning tapers, tossing dice, and thus “consulting the oracle,” with many a sidelong glance of inattention on the part of the six-year-old boy, but with sighs and groans that proved how tragically earnest was the mother’s faith. Dr. Gibson said the numbers on the dice corresponded to wise sayings and advices on strips of paper sold by a mysterious Chinese whose “pious shop” was in the temple vestibule, whither the poor woman resorted to learn the result of her “throw,” and then returned to try again, until she got some response that quieted her. Could human incredulity and ignorance go farther? We saw the restaurants, markets and bazars, as thoroughly Chinese as Pekin itself can furnish; the haunts of vice, all open to the day; the opium dens, with their comatose victims; and then, to comfort our hearts and take away the painful vividness of woman’s degradation, Dr. Gibson took us to see a Christian Chinese home, made by two of his pupils, for years trained under his eye. How can I make the contrast plain enough? A square or two away, the horrid orgies of opium and other dens, but here a well-kept dry goods store, where the husband was proprietor, and in the rear a quiet, pleasant, sacred home. The cleanly, kind-faced wife busy with household cares, her rooms the picture of neatness, her pretty baby sleeping in his crib, and over all the peace that comes from praise and prayer. Never in my life did I approach so near to that perception, too great for mortal to attain, of what the gospel has achieved for woman, as when this gentle, honored wife and mother said, seeing me point to an engraving of “The Good Shepherd,” on her nursery wall: “O, yes! he gave this home to us.”

Otis Gibson conducts the Methodist Mission of San Francisco. In that of the Presbyterian, Mrs. P. B. Browne, a gifted lady, president of the W. C. T. U. of California, is prominent, as she has long been in the Woman’s Christian Association. Mrs. Taylor, president of the local W. C. T. U., is a lovely Christian worker, also Mrs. Williams of the same society, and Miss Annie Crary, daughter of that rare editorial genius, Rev. Dr. B. F. Crary of The California Christian Advocate, is our most talented and best taught Kindergartner.

But there remains a choice bit of portraiture ere my group of philanthropic leaders is complete. How firm and fine the etching that should accurately show the features of Mrs. Sarah B. Cooper, whose strong, sweet individuality I have not seen excelled—no, not even among women. From the time when our eastern press teemed with notices of the Presbyterian lady who had been tried for heresy and acquitted, who had the largest Bible class in San Francisco and was founder of that city’s Kindergartens for the poor, I made a mental memorandum that, no matter whom I missed, this lady I would see. So at 12:30 on a mild May Sabbath noon, I sought the elegant Plymouth Church, built by Rev. Dr. A. L. Stone, and found a veritable congregation in its noble auditorium. Men and women of high character and rare thoughtfulness were gathered, Bibles in hand, to hear the exposition of the acquitted heretic, whom a Pharisaical deacon had begun to assail contemporaneously with her outstripping him in popularity as an expounder of the gospel of love. She entered quietly by a side door, seated herself at a table level with the pews, laid aside her fur-lined cloak and revealed a fragile but symmetric figure, somewhat above the medium height, simply attired in black, with pose and movement altogether graceful, and while perfectly self-possessed, at the furthest remove from being self-assertive. Then I noted a sweet, untroubled brow, soft brown hair chastened with tinge of silver (frost that fell before its time, doubtless at the doughty deacon’s bidding); blue eyes, large, bright and loving; nose of the noblest Roman, dominant yet sensitive, chiseled by generations of culture, the unmistakable expression of highest force and mettlesomeness in character, held in check by all the gentlest sentiments: a mouth firm, yet delicate, full of the smiles that follow tears. Wordsworth’s lines describe her best:

The teacher’s method was not that of pumping in, but drawing out. There were no extended monologues, but the Socratic style of colloquy—brief, comprehensive, passing rapidly from point to point, characterized the most suggestive and helpful hour I ever spent in Bible class. There was not the faintest effort at rhetorical effect; not a suspicion of the hortatory in manner, but all was so fresh, simple and earnest, that in contrast to the pabulum too often served up on similar occasions, this was nutritious essence. A Bible class teacher is like a hen with ample brood and all inclined to “take to the grass.” How to coax them back from their discursive rambles by discovering the toothsome morsel and restfully proclaiming it, the average teacher “finds not,” but it is a portion of “the vision and faculty divine” in this California phenomenon. Let me jot down a few notes:

“What we call the new birth is but the opening of the eyes of the spirit upon its own world.” “There can be no kingdom of love to us, unless we enter it by love. We can not be mathematicians unless we enter the kingdom of mathematics. We can not perceive anything unless we address to it the appropriate organ of perception.” “Have we risen into any experience of the higher life? Are we in the way of completeness of soul? A soul dark toward God is in sad plight. No meaning in worship—none in prayer—that is a soul diseased.” “Baptism makes a child of God as coronation makes a king. But remember, he was a king before he was crowned.” As Lucretia Mott said, “We must have truth for authority, and not authority for truth.” “Dorcas did not bestow alms-gifts but alms-deeds; wrought not by a Dorcas society, but by Dorcas herself.” “Christ’s miracles were subject to the laws of the spiritual world. He could not spiritually bless those who were not susceptible to spiritual blessing.” “If I would prove to any one that God is his father I must first prove to him that I am his brother.”

When the delightful hour was over, among the loving group that gathered around her, attracted by the healing virtue of her spiritual atmosphere, came a temperance sojourner from the east. As my name was mentioned, the face so full of spirituality lighted even more than was its wont, and the soft, strong voice said, “Sometimes an introduction is a recognition—and so I feel it to be now.” Dear reader, I consider that enough of a compliment to last me for a term of years. I feel that it helped mortgage me to a pure life; I shall be better for it “right along.” For if I have ever clasped hands with a truth-seeker, a disciple of Christ and lover of humanity, Sarah B. Cooper held out to me that loving, loyal hand. The only “invitation out” which I gave to myself, and insisted on keeping, was to this woman’s home on Vallejo avenue, where, with her noble husband and true-hearted daughter, she illustrates how near the gates of Paradise a mortal home may be. One’s ideal seldom “materializes,” but in that lovely cottage, with its spotless cleanliness, fair, tasteful rooms, individualized so perfectly that he who ran might read how high the natures mirrored here, in the flower-decked dinner table and the “good talk,” in the study upstairs packed with choice books, and the sunset window looking out over the Golden Gate, I stored up memories that ought to yield electric energy for many a day. We talked of the past—and I found that my new friend, as well as her husband, had been for years the pupil of my beloved father in the gospel, our lamented Dr. Henry Bannister, late Professor of Hebrew in Garrett Biblical Institute at Evanston, Ill. With what reverence and tenderness we talked of that brave, earnest, sympathetic life! We spoke of her experiences as a teacher in the South, and she rejoiced in the good tidings I brought of a “Yankee school-ma’am’s” welcome for temperance’s sake in nearly one hundred cities of Dixie’s land. We talked most of all about God and his unspeakable gift of Christ Jesus our Lord. I found this tireless brain had busied itself with the study of all religions, the testimony of science, philosophy and art; a more hospitable intellect I have not known, nor a glance more wide and tolerant, but “Christ and him crucified” is to that loyal heart “the Chief among thousands and altogether lovely.”

Let me give a few sentences from the inspiring letters that come to me across the distance between that bay window by the Golden Gate, and my “Rest Cottage” by the inland sea:

“If I know myself, I have one regnant wish: To help build up the coming kingdom.” “I desire you to include me in all your invocations for light and guidance.” “We move on in one work, we are co-laborers for a common Master—blessed be His name. We both aim at one thing: character-building in Christ Jesus. I am to speak before the C. L. S. C. at Pacific Grove, Monterey, on the ‘Kindergarten in its Relation to Character-Building.’ I shall speak of temperance. Have tried to help women both north and south who are working in their little towns heroically.” “The Chautauqua of the Coast, energized by desperate, sometimes almost despairing love for their tempted ones.”

The Independent and other leading journals have in Mrs. Cooper a valued correspondent, and her work among the little, ill-born and worse-nurtured children of San Francisco’s moral Sahara has been described by her own pure and radiant pen. It is one of the most potent forces in that city’s uplift toward Christianity. Among the best types of representative women, America may justly count Sarah B. Cooper, the student, the Christian exegete and philosopher, and the tender friend of every untaught little child.