noon
The same sea-breeze blew chilly and steadily from the bay , yet softened and subdued by the fresh odors of leaf and flower . The outlying fringe of oaks were starred through their underbrush with anemones and dog-roses ; there were lupines growing rankly in the open spaces , and along the gentle slopes of Oak Grove daisies were already scattered . And , as if it were part of this vernal efflorescence , the eminence itself was crowned with that latest flower of progress and improvement , -- the new Oak Grove Hotel ! Long , low , dazzling with white colonnades , verandas , and balconies which retained , however , enough of the dampness of recent creation to make them too cool for loungers , except at high noon , the hotel nevertheless had the charms of freshness , youth , and cleanliness . Reddy 's fastidious neatness showed itself in all the appointments , from the mirrored and marbled barroom , gilded parlors , and snowy dining-room , to the chintz and maple furnishing of the bedrooms above . Reddy 's taste , too , had selected the pretty site ; his good fortune had afterward discovered in an adjoining thicket a spring of blandly therapeutic qualities . A complaisant medical faculty of San Francisco attested to its merits ; a sympathetic press advertised the excellence of the hotel ; a novelty-seeking , fashionable circle -- as yet without laws and blindly imitative -- found the new hotel an admirable variation to the vulgar ordinary `` across the bay '' excursion , and an accepted excuse for a novel social dissipation .