For the first time we circled a high cape at the Golden Gate and drove out on a quay. Along the quay stretched a beach on which the waves of the Pacific Ocean broke with thunder: it was a sunny but windy December day. The swimming season was over, and the entertainment establishments which faced the quay were empty. Here San Franciscans go out to enjoy themselves on warm Sundays. Here one may test his strength, ride on electric automobiles that bump into one another, for ten cents receive a portrait of one's future wife with a description of her character, play pinball games, and, on the whole, secure a brimful measure of the American entertainment ration. But how beautiful this place was! The quay seemed no lesssweeping than the ocean—there was no end to either of them.

At the "Topsy" restaurant—which specialized in roasted breaded chicken, and, therefore, had its roof decorated with a cockerel's head and its hall with the portrait of hens—we saw how a San Franciscan in moderate circumstances has his "good time." For fifty cents he gets a portion of chicken, and, having eaten it, dances until he is on the verge of collapsing. After he is tired of dancing, he and his girl, taking no pity on his Sunday-best trousers, ride down a polished wooden chute placed in the hall especially for entertainment-seeking chicken eaters.

It may be due to the influence of the ocean, the climate, or the sailors from all parts of the world who crowd each other here, but in the restaurant business of San Francisco one notices a play of mind not customary in America. In Bernstein's Restaurant, somewhere in the centre, near Market Street, we were served fish courses exclusively. The restaurant itself was built in the shape of a ship, and the food was served by people in the uniforms of captains and sailors. Everywhere hung life preservers with the inscription " Bernstein." That, of course, was no evidence of a very artistic imagination. But after a drug-store lunch No. 3, this was much more satisfactory, especially since it did not cost any more than a visit to a drug-store. Not far from the harbour was a quite remarkable food establishment, an Italian restaurant called "Lucca's."' Its owner impressed us as a magician and benefactor. The magician's charge for a dinner is, to tell the truth, not so very little—a dollar—but then here for the same price one has the right to ask for additional helpings of any course one finds to his special liking. However, the main surprise is still ahead. After dinner, when the visitor is putting on his overcoat, he is given a package of pastry neatly tied with a ribbon.

"But I did not order any pastry!" the visitor says, turning pale.

"This is free," the waiter replies, looking at him with burning Italian eyes. "It is a gift."

But this is not all. The visitor is also given a ticket. The ticket entitles him to come the following morning into Lucca's pastryshop for a roll and a cup of coffee. At the moment the visitor's overwhelmed brain cannot grasp that the price of the pastry and the coffee and roll entered into the honestly paid dollar, and that all of this extraordinary commercial reckoning of Lucca's is based on the supposition that many of the visitors will not come the next day for their coffee and roll, since they will not have the time for it. Here, as they say, was a plain case of diamond cut diamond.

Having relieved ourselves of visits, we felt cheery and buoyant, like students after an examination. The fact that we had seen real Rodins in Paris and in Moscow saved us from the necessity of looking at the copies of Rodin at the museum, so we wandered over the city without plan or purpose. And since our entire journey had passed quite wisely and had been subjected to Mr. Adams's strict plan, we regarded these free hours of wanderings as a well-deserved rest.

We don't understand why and how we found ourselves in the "Tropical Swimming Pool"—that is, in a winter basin. We stood there, without taking off our top-coats, in a huge, old, white wooden dwelling where the air was as oppressive as in a hothouse; here and there bamboo poles and drapery protruded, and, after admiring a young couple in swimming-suits who very busily played ping-pong and a fat man who floundered in a large box of water, we noticed several pinball games and an automatic machine for chewing gum, so went on, to the Japanese garden.

This garden was a gift to the city from the Japanese empress. In it everything was small. Hunchbacked bamboo bridges, midget trees, and a Japanese house with sliding paper doors. In it lives a Japanese who, if the visitors like, "will brew real Japanese tea for them. We sat in a midget bamboo pergola and drank fragrant green hot water, which the polite host served noiselessly. When we felt ourselves on the blessed islands of Nippon, our fellow travellers told us that this Japanese had recently destroyed his wife. He had tormented her so that she had poured kerosene and set fire to herself.

From the Japanese garden we went to the Chinese city. It was picturesque and rather dirty. Everything in it was Chinese—its denizens, its paper lanterns, and the long pieces of cloth with hieroglyphics. But in the store sat only Japanese who sold kimonos, robes, wooden slippers, coloured photographs and Chinese trinkets with the stamp "Made in Japan."

Our free day was finished by a visit to a football match. The teams o| two universities were playing: Santa Clara and Texas Christian.

But before passing to a description of this event which, to some extern, helped us to understand the nature of America, it is necessary to say a few words about American football in general.

Football in America means this: the very largest stadium, the very largest congregation of people and automobiles in one place, the very loudest noise that can be emitted through the oral cavity of a certain creature with two hands, two legs, one head, and one hat put on aslant; it means the very largest appropriation of money, a special football press and a special football literature (stories, novelettes, and novels of football life). A big football match in America is an event of much greater significance than a concert by a symphony orchestra under the direction of Toscanini, a cyclone in Florida, a war in Europe, or even the kidnapping of a famous millionaire's daughter. If a bandit wants to become famous, he must not commit his sensational crime on the day of a football match between the Army and the Navy, but must find for it a more suitable and quieter time. Mussolini, for example, found a very convenient moment for attacking Abyssinia. On that day there was no football game in America, so the Duce received good publicity on the first page of all the newspapers. Otherwise, he would have had to move over to the second or maybe even to the third page.

The match which we saw in San Francisco cannot be regarded as one of the big games. However, it was not such a very small game either, and we would not advise Gigli or even Jascha Heifetz to give a concert on that day in San Francisco.

The grandstands of the stadium, filled in the centre, were almost vacant on the ends. Still, there were approximately thirty thousand people there. At first the play seemed incomprehensible and, therefore, not interesting.

American football has nothing in common with European football. These games resemble each other so little that when in New York in a newsreel theatre a portion of a football match between two European teams was shown, there was laughter in the audience.

And so, for some time we could not understand what was going on in the field. People in leather helmets, looking a little bit like sea divers, some of them in red, others in white, stood facing each other, their heads and backs bent, and for several seconds kept standing without a move. Then a whistle blew and these people dashed frantically away from their places. The reds and the whites got mixed up, as it seemed to us, seizing each other by their legs. Such a commotion occurs in a chicken coop when a polecat appears. It seemed to us that we even heard the flapping of wings. Then they all fell on top of each other, forming a large pile of bodies in motion. The audience rose and shouted lustily. The referee whistled. The football players resumed their places and everything began all over again.