328 AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



city ruled by bosses and looted by a band of thieves. 

 Since then the uprising of the better stratum of the 

 people has begun and now San Francisco is a re- 

 stored city, far richer and more substantial than 

 before its great disaster, and ruled with some 

 degree of economy and honesty. 



During all these bright and glorious months of 

 1915 the Golden Gate has been open to welcome 

 all the Nations of the earth and has become 

 thereby at last cosmopolitan. I have certainly 

 lived to see astounding things. The mutual 

 slaughter of nations is not new but the devastation 

 of twelve European nations by machinery, is as 

 wonderful as it is horrible. In my lifetime I have 

 seen six Expositions beginning with Paris in 

 1878, but none compared in beauty or extent with 

 the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. 

 And the greatest wonder of all is the Panama 

 Canal. None of these things impress me because 

 they are big. Bigness is like millions, incompre- 

 hensible. Tall buildings may be made taller by 

 the addition of a few more courses of brick or 

 stone; tunnels and canals may be made longer 

 by a few more blasts of dynamite; but the whole 

 enterprise of building the Panama Canal is an 

 eighth wonder which I am glad I have lived to see. 



