Pick out by the street light the names on the pier sheds. “Java,” they say, and “Singapore” and “Hong Kong” and “Pago Pago.” Repeat them and look to the dark west and know that all America is at your back. You’re at the end of the continent, and the water you hear whispering under the wharf has whitened the sands of Tahiti and tossed the ice floes in the Bering Sea. The spices you smell came from Cathay.

So stand there, with the cool night wind on your cheeks, with the sea and the lonely music the sea gulls make. Stand still in the night and listen. You are very close to San Francisco’s heart. Maybe you will hear it beating, or maybe what you hear will only be the restless stirring of the sea; but one is like the other…