PALACE HOTEL, SAN FRANCISCO, Wednesday Evening, October 23.

A palace truly! Where shall we find its equal? Windsor Hotel, good-bye! you must yield the palm to your great Western rival, as far as structure goes, though in all other respects you may keep the foremost place. There is no other hotel building in the world equal to this. The court of the Grand at Paris is poor compared to that of the Palace. Its general effect at night, when brilliantly lighted, is superb; its furniture, rooms and appointments are all fine, but then it tells you all over it was built to "whip all creation," and the millions of its lucky owner enabled him to triumph. It is as much in place in San Francisco as the Taj would be in Sligo; but then your California operator, when he has made a "pile," goes in for a hotel, just as in New York one takes to a marble palace or a grand railway depot, or in Cincinnati to a music hall, or in Pittsburgh to building a church or another rolling mill. Every community has its social idiosyncrasies, but it struck us as rather an amusing coincidence that while we had recently greeted no less a man than Potter Palmer, Esq., behind the counter in Chicago as "mine host of the Garter," we should so soon have found ourselves in the keeping of Senator Sharon, lessee of the Palace. These hotels do not impress one as being quite suitable monuments for one who naturally considers his labors about over when he builds, as they are apt apparently to prove rather lively for comfort to the owners, and we have decided when our building time comes that it shall not be in the hotel line. We got to bed at last, but who could sleep after such a day - after such a week! The ceaseless motion, with the click, click, click of the wheels - our sweet lullaby apparently this had become - was wanting; and then the telegrams from home, which bade us Godspeed, the warm, balmy air of Italy, when we had left winter behind - all this drove sleep away; and when drowsiness came, what apparitions of Japanese, Chinese, Indians, elephants, camels, josses! passed through our brain in endless procession. We were at the Golden Gate; we had just reached the edge of the Pacific Ocean, and before us lay

   ... "the wealth of Ormus and of Ind, 
   Or where the gorgeous East, with richest hand, 
   Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold.

To every blink the livelong night there came this refrain, which seemed to close each scene of Oriental magnificence that haunted the imagination:

   "And our gude ship sails ye morn, 
    And our gude ship sails ye morn."

Do what I would, the words of the old Scotch ballad would not down. Sleep! who could sleep in such an hour? Dead must be the man whose pulse beats not quicker, and whose enthusiasm is not enkindled when for the first time he is privileged to whisper to himself, The East! the East!

   "And our gude ship sails ye morn."

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