Oh, pure and true and kind in all thy ways!
Not less a servant of thy Lord
Because thy ways are little in accord
With the suave blandness of these silken days.
Thou, self-contained yet tender,
What carest thou for popular power or praise ?
Rev. Alfred Todhunter.
It was in 1886 that the flowery rector of San Francisco's St. John's Episcopal Church indited these lines to the recently widowed Lily Hitchcock Coit, already such a civic adornment that her photograph was entombed in the cornerstone of the new City Hall. This week all the public dignitaries of San Francisco and a few rheumy veterans of...