As Mr. Herbert Bly glanced for the first time at the house which was to be his future abode¹ in San Francisco, he was somewhat startled. In that early period of feverish² civic³ improvement the street before it had been repeatedly graded and lowered until the dwelling—originally a pioneer suburban⁴ villa⁵ perched upon a slope of Telegraph Hill—now stood sixty feet above the sidewalk, superposed like some Swiss chalet on successive galleries built in the sand-hill, and connected by a half-dozen distinct zigzag⁶ flights of wooden staircase. Stimulated⁷, however, by the thought that the view from the top would be a fine one, and that existence there would have all the quaint⁸ originality⁹ of Robinson Crusoe's tree-dwelling, Mr. Bly began cheerfully to mount the steps. It should be premised that, although a recently appointed clerk in a large banking¹¹ house, Mr. Bly was somewhat youthful and imaginative, and regarded the ascent¹² as part of that "Excelsior" climbing pointed¹⁰ out by a great poet as a praiseworthy function of ambitious youth.