Art: Lily the Vamp

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...

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