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CIVIC SKETCHES.
A VENERABLE IMPOSTOR.
As I glance across my table, I am somewhat distracted
by the spectacle of a venerable head whose
crown occasionally appears beyond, at about its
level. The apparition of a very small hand—whose
fingers are bunchy and have the appearance of being
slightly webbed—which is frequently lifted above
the table in a vain and impotent attempt to reachthe
inkstand, always affects me as a novelty at each recurrence
of the phenomenon. Yet both the venerable
head and bunchy fingers belonged to an individual
with whom I am familiar, and to whom, for certain
reasons hereafter described, I choose to apply the
epithet written above this article.
His advent in the family was attended with peculiar
circumstances. He was received with some concern—the
number of retainers having been increased
by one in honor of his arrival. He appeared to be
weary—his pretence was that he had come from a
long journey—so that for days, weeks, and even
months, he did not leave his bed except when he was
carried. But it was remarkable that his appetite was
invariably regular and healthy, and that his meals,
which he required should be brought to him, were
with the family, his knowledge of our vernacular
being limited, but occasionally spoke to himself
in his own language—a foreign tongue. The
difficulties attending this eccentricity were obviated
by the young woman who had from the first taken
him under her protection—being, like the rest of her
sex, peculiarly open to impositions—and who at once
disorganized her own tongue to suit his. This was
effected by the contraction of the syllables of some
words, the addition of syllables to others, and an ingenious
disregard for tenses and the governing powers
of the verb. The same singular law which impels
people in conversation with foreigners to imitate their
broken English, governed the family in their communications
with him. He received these evidences
of his power with an indifference not wholly free
from scorn. The expression of his eye would occasionally
denote that his higher nature revolted from
them. I have no doubt myself that his wants were
frequently misinterpreted; that the stretching forth
of his hands toward the moon and stars might have
been the performance of some religious rite peculiar
to his own country, which was in ours misconstrued
into a desire for physical nourishment. His repetition
of the word “goo-goo”—which was subject to a
variety of opposite interpretations—when taken in
conjunction with his size, in my mind seemed to indicate
his aboriginal or Aztec origin.
I incline to this belief, as it sustains the impression
I have already hinted at, that his extreme youth is a
lived before at some remote period, and that his conduct
fully justifies his title as A Venerable Impostor.
A variety of circumstances corroborate this impression:
His tottering walk, which is a senile as well
as a juvenile condition; his venerable head, thatched
with such imperceptible hair that, at a distance, it
looks like a mild aureola, and his imperfect dental
exhibition. But beside these physical peculiarities
may be observed certain moral symptoms, which go
to disprove his assumed youth. He is in the habit
of falling into reveries, caused, I have no doubt, by
some circumstance which suggests a comparison
with his experience in his remoter boyhood, or by
some serious retrospection of the past years. He
has been detected lying awake, at times when he
should have been asleep, engaged in curiously comparing
the bed-clothes, walls and furniture with
some recollection of his youth. At such moments
he has been heard to sing softly to himself fragments
of some unintelligible composition, which probably
still linger in his memory as the echoes of a music
he has long outgrown. He has the habit of receiving
strangers with the familiarity of one who had
met them before, and to whom their antecedents and
peculiarities were matters of old acquaintance, and
so unerring is his judgment of their previous character
that when he withholds his confidence I am apt
to withhold mine. It is somewhat remarkable that
while the maturity of his years and the respect due
to them is denied by man, his superiority and venerable
The dog treats him with a respect and consideration
accorded to none others, and the cat permits a familiarity
which I should shudder to attempt. It may
be considered an evidence of some Pantheistic quality
in his previous education, that he seems to recognize
a fellowship even in inarticulate objects; he
has been known to verbally address plants, flowers
and fruit, and to extend his confidence to such inanimate
objects as chairs and tables. There can be
little doubt that, in the remote period of his youth,
these objects were endowed with not only sentient
natures but moral capabilities, and he is still in the
habit of beating them when they collide with him,
and of pardoning them with a kiss.
As he has grown older—rather let me say, as we
have approximated to his years—he has, in spite of
the apparent paradox, lost much of his senile gravity.
It must be confessed that some of his actions of late
appear to our imperfect comprehension inconsistent
with his extreme age. A habit of marching up and
down with a string tied to a soda-water bottle, a disposition
to ride anything that could by any exercise
of the liveliest fancy be made to assume equine proportions,
a propensity to blacken his venerable white
hair with ink and coal dust, and an omnivorous appetite
which did not stop at chalk, clay, or cinders,
were peculiarities not calculated to excite respect.
In fact, he would seem to have become demoralized,
and when, after a prolonged absence the other day,
he was finally discovered standing upon the front
his limited vocabulary, the circumstance could only
be accounted for as the garrulity of age.
But I lay aside my pen amidst an ominous silence
and the disappearance of the venerable head from
my plane of vision. As I step to the other side of
the table, I find that sleep has overtaken him in an
overt act of hoary wickedness. The very pages I
have devoted to an exposition of his deceit he has
quietly abstracted, and I find them covered with
cabalistic figures and wild-looking hieroglyphs traced
with his forefinger dipped in ink, which doubtless
in his own language conveys a scathing commentary
on my composition. But he sleeps peacefully, and
there is something in his face which tells me that he
has already wandered away to that dim reign of his
youth where I cannot follow him. And as there
comes a strange stirring at my heart when I contemplate
the immeasurable gulf which lies between us,
and how slight and feeble as yet is his grasp on this
world and its strange realities, I find too late that
I also am a willing victim of the Venerable Impostor.
FROM A BALCONY.
The little stone balcony, which, by a popular fallacy,
is supposed to be a necessary appurtenance of
my window, has long been to me a source of curious
interest. The fact that the asperities of our summer
weather will not permit me to use it but once or
twice in six months, does not alter my concern for this
incongruous ornament. It affects me as I suppose
the conscious possession of a linen coat or a nankeen
trousers might affect a sojourner here who has not
entirely outgrown his memory of Eastern summer
heat and its glorious compensations—a luxurious
providence against a possible but by no means probable
contingency. I do no longer wonder at the
persistency with which San Franciscans adhere to
this architectural superfluity in the face of climatical
impossibilities. The balconies in which no one sits,
the piazzas on which no one lounges, are timid advances
made to a climate whose churlishness we are
trying to temper by an ostentation of confidence.
Ridiculous as this spectacle is at all seasons, it is
never more so than in that bleak interval between
whistle seems to have concentrated all the hard
unsympathetic quality of the climate into one vocal
expression. Add to this the appearance of one or
two pedestrians, manifestly too late for their dinners,
and tasting in the shrewish air a bitter premonition
of the welcome that awaits them at home, and you
have one of those ordinary views from my balcony,
which makes the balcony itself ridiculous.
But as I lean over its balustrade to-night—a night
rare in its kindness and beauty—and watch the fiery
ashes of my cigar drop into the abysmal darkness
below, I am inclined to take back the whole of that
preceding paragraph, although it cost me some labor
to elaborate its polite malevolence. I can even
recognize some melody in the music which comes irregularly
and fitfully from the balcony of the Museum
on Market Street, although it may be broadly stated
that, as a general thing, the music of all museums,
menageries, and circuses, becomes greatly demoralized—possibly
through associations with the beasts. So
soft and courteous is this atmosphere that I have detected
the flutter of one or two light dresses on the
adjacent balconies and piazzas, and the front parlor
windows of a certain aristocratic mansion in the vicinity
which have always maintained a studious reserve
in regard to the interior, to-night are suddenly
thrown into the attitude of familiar disclosure. A
few young people are strolling up the street with a
lounging step which is quite a relief to that usual
brisk, business-like pace which the chilly nights impose
genial influences of the air are not restricted to the
opening of shutters and front doors; other and
more gentle disclosures are made, no doubt, beneath
this moonlight. The bonnet and hat which passed
beneath my balcony a few moments ago, were suspiciously
close together. I argued from this that my
friend the editor will probably receive any quantity
of verses for his next issue, containing allusions to
“Luna,” in which the original epithet of “silver,”
will be applied to this planet, and that a “boon”
will be asked for the evident purpose of rhyming
with “moon,” and for no other. Should neither of
the parties be equal to this expression, the pent-up
feelings of the heart will probably find vent later in
the evening over the piano, in “I wandered by the
brookside,” or “When the moon on the lake is beaming.”
But it has been permitted me to hear the fulfillment
of my prophecy even as it was uttered. From
the window of number Twelve hundred and Seven,
gushes upon the slumbrous misty air, the maddening
ballad, “Ever of Thee,” while at Twelve Hundred
and Eleven, the “Star of the Evening” rises with a
chorus. I am inclined to think that there is something
is the utter vacuity of the refrain in this song,
which especially commends itself to the young.
The simple statement, “Star of the Evening,” is again
and again repeated with an imbecile relish; while the
adjective “beautiful” recurs with a steady persistency,
too exasperating to dwell upon here. At occasional
intervals, a bass voice enunciates “Star-r! Star-r!”
in my balcony, I picture the possessor of that voice
as a small, stout young man, standing a little apart
from the other singers, with his hands behind him,
under his coat-tail, and a severe expression of countenance.
He sometimes leans forward, with a futile
attempt to read the music over somebody else's
shoulder, but always resumes his old severity of attitude
before singing his part. Meanwhile, the celestial
subjects of this choral adoration look down
upon the scene with a tranquillity and patience which
can only result from the security with which their
immeasurable remoteness invests them. I would
remark that the stars are not the only topics subject
to this “damnable iteration.” A certain popular
song, which contains the statement, “I will not forget
you, mother,” apparently reposes all its popularity
on the constant and dreary repetition of this unimportant
information, which at least produces the desired
result among the audience. If the best operatic
choruses are not above this weakness, the unfamiliar
language in which they are sung offer less violation
to common sense.
It may be parenthetically stated here that the
songs alluded to above may be found in sheet music
on the top of the piano of any young lady who has
just come from boarding-school. “The Old Arm
Chair,” or “Woodman, Spare that Tree,” will be
also found in easy juxtaposition. The latter songs
are usually brought into service at the instance of an
uncle or bachelor brother, whose request is generally
and the gratuitous observation that “we are retrograding,
sir—retrograding;” and that “there is no
music like the old songs.” He sometimes condescends
to accompany “Marie” in a tremulous baritone,
and is particularly forcible in those passages
where the word “repeat” is written, for reasons stated
above. When the song is over, to the success of
which he feels he has materially contributed, he will
inform you that you may talk of your “arias,” and
your “romanzas,” “but for music, sir—music—” at
which point he becomes incoherent and unintelligible.
It is this gentleman who suggests “China,” or
“Brattle Street,” as a suitable and cheerful exercise
for the social circle. There are certain amatory
songs, of an arch and coquettish character, familiar to
these localities, which the young lady being called
upon to sing, declines with a bashful and tantalizing
hesitation. Prominent among these may be mentioned
an erotic effusion entitled “I'm Talking in
my Sleep,” which, when sung by a young person vivaciously
and with appropriate glances, can be made
to drive languishing swains to the verge of madness.
Ballads of this quality afford splendid opportunities
for bold young men, who, by ejaculating “Oh” and
“Ah” at the affecting passages, frequently gain a
fascinating reputation for wildness and skepticism.
But the music which called up these parenthetical
reflections has died away, and with it the slight animosities
it inspired. The last song has been sung,
the piano closed, the lights are withdrawn from the
stoops and balconies. The silence is broken only
by the rattle and rumble of carriages coming from
theatre and opera. I fancy that this sound—which,
seeming to be more distinct at this hour than at any
other time, might be called one of the civic voices of
the night—has certain urbane suggestions, not unpleasant
to those born and bred in large cities. The
moon, round and full, gradually usurps the twinkling
lights of the city, that one by one seem to fade
away and be absorbed in her superior lustre. The
distant Mission hills are outlined against the sky,
but through one gap the outlying fog which has
stealthily invested us, seems to have effected a
breach, and only waits the co-operation of the laggard
sea breezes to sweep down and take the beleaguered
city by assault. An ineffable calm sinks
over the landscape. In the magical moonlight the
shot-tower loses its angular outline and practical relations,
and becomes a minaret from whose balcony
an invisible muezzin calls the Faithful to prayer.
“Prayer is better than Sleep.” But what is this? a
shuffle of feet on the pavement, a low hum of voices,
a twang of some diabolical instrument, a preliminary
hem and cough. Heavens! it cannot be! Ah, yes
—it is—it is—Serenaders!
Anathema Maranatha! May purgatorial pains
seize you, William, Count of Poitou, Girard de
Boreuil, Arnaud de Marveil, Bertrand de Born, mischievous
progenitors of jongleurs, troubadours, provencals,
minnesingers, minstrels and singers of cansos
your modern descendants, the “metre ballad mongers,”
who carry the shamelessness of the middle
ages into the nineteenth century, and awake a sleeping
neighborhood to the brazen knowledge of their
loves and wanton fancies. Destruction and demoralization
pursue these pitiable imitators of a barbarous
age, when ladies' names and charms were shouted
through the land, and modest maidens never lent
presence to tilt or tourney without hearing a chronicle
of her virtues go round the lists, shouted by
wheezy heralds and taken up by roaring swashbucklers.
Perdition overpower such ostentatious wooers.
Marry! shall I shoot the amorous feline who nightly
iterates his love songs on my roof, and yet withhold
my trigger finger from yonder pranksome gallant?
Go to! Here is an orange left of last week's repast.
Decay hath overtaken it—it possesseth neither savor
nor cleanliness. Ha! cleverly thrown! A hit—a
palpable hit! Peradventure I have still a boot that
hath done me service, and, baring a looseness of the
heel, an ominous yawning at the side, 'tis in good
case! Na'theless, 'twill serve. So! so! What!
dispersed! Nay, then, I too will retire.
MELONS.
As I do not suppose the most gentle of readers
will believe that anybody's sponsors in baptism ever
willfully assumed the responsibility of such a name,
I may as well state that I have reason to infer that
Melons was simply the nick-name of a small boy I
once knew. If he had any other, I never knew it.
Various theories were often projected by me, to
account for this strange cognomen. His head, which
was covered with a transparent down, like that
which clothes very small chickens, plainly permitting
the scalp to show through, to an imaginative
mind might have suggested that succulent vegetable.
That his parents, recognizing some poetical significance
in the fruits of the season, might have given
this name to an August child, was an Oriental explanation.
That from his infancy, he was fond of indulging
in melons, seemed on the whole the most
likely, particularly as Fancy was not bred in
McGinnis's Court. He dawned upon me as melons.
His proximity was indicated by shrill, youthful
voices, as “Ah, Melons!”—or playfully, “Hi,
Melons!” or authoritatively, “You, Melons!”
McGinnis's Court was a democratic expression of
some obstinate and radical property-holder. Occupying
a limited space between two fashionable thoroughfares,
it refused to conform to circumstances, but sturdily
paraded its umkempt glories, and frequently asserted
itself in ungrammatical language. My window—a
rear room on the ground floor—in this way derived
blended light and shadow from the Court. So
low was the window-sill, that had I been the
least predisposed to somnambulism, it would have
broken out under such favorable auspices, and I
should have haunted McGinnis's Court. My speculations
as to the origin of the Court were not altogether
gratuitous, for by means of this window I
once saw the Past, as through a glass darkly. It was
a Celtic shadow that early one morning obstructed
my ancient lights. It seemed to belong to an individual
with a pea-coat, a stubby pipe and bristling
beard. He was gazing intently at the Court, resting
on a heavy cane, somewhat in the way that heroes
dramatically visit the scenes of their boyhood.
As there was little of architectural beauty in the
Court, I came to the conclusion that it was McGinnis
looking after his property. The fact that he carefully
kicked a broken bottle out of the road, somewhat
strengthened me in the opinion. But he presently
walked away, and the Court knew him no
more. He probably collected his rents by proxy—if
he collected them at all.
Beyond Melons, of whom all this is purely introductory,
there was little to interest the most sanguine
a great deal of washing was done, in comparison
with the visible results.—There was always something
whisking on the line, and always something
whisking through the Court, that looked as if it
ought to be there. A fish geranium—of all plants
kept for the recreation of mankind, certainly the
greatest allusion—straggled under the window.
Through its dusty leaves I caught the first glance of
Melons.
His age was about seven. He looked older, from
the venerable whiteness of his head, and it was
impossible to conjecture his size, as he always wore
clothes apparently belonging to some shapely youth
of nineteen. A pair of pantaloons, that, when sustained
by a single suspender, completely equipped
him—formed his every-day suit. How, with this
lavish superfluity of clothing, he managed to perform
the surprising gymnastic feats it has been my privilege
to witness, I have never been able to tell. His
“turning the crab,” and other minor dislocations, were
always attended with success. It was not an unusual
sight at any hour of the day to find Melons suspended
on a line, or to see his venerable head appearing
above the roofs of the outhouses. Melons knew the
exact height of every fence in the vicinity, its facilities
for scaling, and the possibility of seizure on the
other side. His more peaceful and quieter amusments
consisted in dragging a disused boiler by a
large string, with hideous outcries, to imaginary fires.
Melons was not gregarious in his habits. A few
they eventually became abusive, and their visits
were more strictly predatory incursions for old bottles
and junk which formed the staple of McGinnis's
Court. Overcome by loneliness one day, Melons
inveigled a blind harper into the Court. For two
hours did that wretched man prosecute his unhallowed
calling, unrecompensed, and going round and
round the Court, apparently under the impression
that it was some other place, while Melons surveyed
him fron an adjoining fence with calm satisfaction.
It was this absence of conscientious motives that
brought Melons into disrepute with his aristocratic
neighbors. Orders were issued that no child of
wealthy and pious parentage should play with him.
This mandate, as a matter of course, invested Melons
with a fascinating interest to them. Admiring glances
were cast at Melons from nursery windows. Baby
fingers beckoned to him. Invitations to tea (on wood
and pewter) were lisped to him from aristocratic
back-yards. It was evident he was looked upon as a
pure and noble being, untrammeled by the conventionalities
of parentage, and physically as well as
mentally exalted above them. One afternoon an unusual
commotion prevailed in the vicinity of McGinnis's
Court. Looking from my window I saw Melons
perched on the roof of a stable, pulling up a rope by
which one “Tommy,” an infant scion of an adjacent
and wealthy house, was suspended in mid-air. In
vain the female relatives of Tommy, congregated in
the back-yard, expostulated with Melons; in vain
his position, Melons redoubled his exertions and at last
landed Tommy on the roof. Then it was that the
humiliating fact was disclosed that Tommy had been
acting in collusion with Melons. He grinned delightedly
back at his parents, as if “by merit raised
to that bad eminence.” Long before the ladder
arrived that was to succor him, he became the sworn
ally of Melons, and I regret to say, incited by the same
audacious boy, “chaffed” his own flesh and blood
below him. He was eventually taken, though—of
course—Melons escaped. But Tommy was restricted
to the window after that, and the companionship
was limited to “Hi, Melons!” and “You Tommy!”
and Melons, to all practical purposes, lost him forever.
I looked afterward to see some signs of sorrow on
Melon's part, but in vain; he buried his grief, if he
had any, somewhere in his one voluminous garment.
At about this time my opportunities of knowing Melons
became more extended. I was engaged in filling
a void in the Literature of the Pacific Coast. As this
void was a pretty large one, and as I was informed
that the Pacific Coast languished under it, I set apart
two hours each day to this work of filling in. It
was necessary that I should adopt a methodical system,
so I retired from the world and locked myself
in my room at a certain hour each day, after coming
from my office. I then carefully drew out my portfolio
and read what I had written the day before.
This would suggest some alteration, and I would
carefully re-write it. During this operation I would
proved extremely interesting and attractive. It
would generally suggest another and better method
of “filling in.” Turning this method over reflectively
in my mind, I would finally commence the
new method which I eventually abandoned for the
original plan. At this time I would become convinced
that my exhausted faculties demanded a cigar.
The operation of lighting a cigar usually suggested
that a little quiet reflection and meditation would be
of service to me, and I always allowed myself to be
guided by prudential instincts. Eventually, seated
by my window, as before stated, Melons asserted
himself. Though our conversation rarely went further
than “Hello, Mister!” and “Ah, Melons!” a vagabond
instinct we felt in common implied a communion
deeper than words. In this spiritual commingling
the time passed, often beguiled by gymnastics on the
fence or line (always with an eye to my window) until
dinner was announced, and I found a more practical
void required my attention. An unlooked for incident
drew us in closer relation.
A sea-faring friend just from a tropical voyage had
presented me with a bunch of bananas. They were
not quite ripe, and I hung them before my window
to mature in the sun of McGinnis's Court, whose foreing
qualities were remarkable. In the mysteriously
mingled odors of ship and shore which they diffused
throughout my room, there was a lingering reminiscence
of low latitudes. But even that joy was fleeting
and evanescent: they never reached maturity.
Coming home one day as I turned the corner of
that fashionable thoroughfare before alluded to, I
met a small boy eating a banana. There was nothing
remarkable in that, but as I neared McGinnis's
Court I presently met another small boy, also eating
a banana. A third small boy engaged in a like occupation
obtruded a painful coincidence upon my
mind. I leave the psychological reader to determine
the exact co-relation between this circumstance and
the sickening sense of loss that overcame me on witnessing
it. I reached my room—and found the
bunch of bananas were gone.
There was but one who knew of their existence,
but one who frequented my window, but one capable
of the gymnastic effort to procure them, and that
was—I blush to say it—Melons. Melons the depredator—Melons,
despoiled by larger boys of his ill-gotten
booty, or reckless and indiscreetly liberal;
Melons—now a fugitive on some neighboring house-top.
I lit a cigar and drawing my chair to the window
sought surcrease of sorrow in the contemplation
of the fish geranium. In a few moments something
white passed my window at about the level of
the edge. There was no mistaking that hoary head,
which now represented to me only aged iniquity.
It was Melons, that venerable, juvenile hypocrite.
He affected not to observe me, and would have
withdrawn quietly, but that horrible fascination which
causes the murderer to revisit the scene of his crime,
impelled him toward my window. I smoked calmly
and gazed at him without speaking. He walked
rigid, half belligerent expression of eye and shoulder,
intended to represent the carelessness of innocence.
Once or twice he stopped, and putting his arms
their whole length into his capacious trowsers, gazed
with some interest at the additional width they thus
acquired. Then he whistled. The singular conflicting
conditions of John Brown's body and soul were
at that time beginning to attract the attention of
youth, and Melons's performance of that melody was
always remarkable. But to-day he whistled falsely
and shrilly between his teeth. At last he met my
eye. He winced slightly, but recovered himself, and
going to the fence, stood for a few moments on his
hands, with his bare feet quivering in the air. Then
he turned toward me and threw out a conversational
preliminary.
“They is a cirkis”—said Melons gravely, hanging
with his back to the fence and his arms twisted
around the palings—“a cirkis over yonder!”—indicating
the locality with his foot—“with hosses, and
hossback riders. They is a man wot rides six hosses
to onct—six hosses to onct—and nary saddle”—and
he paused in expectation.
Even this equestrian novelty did not affect me. I
still kept a fixed gaze on Melons's eye, and he began
to tremble and visibly shrink in his capacious garment.
Some other desperate means—conversation
with Melons was always a desperate means—must be
resorted to. He recommenced more artfully.
“Do you know Carrots?”
I had a faint remembrance of a boy of that euphonious
name, with scarlet hair, who was a playmate
and persecuter of Melons. But I said nothing.
“Carrots is a bad boy. Killed a policeman onct.
Wears a dirk knife in his boots, saw him to-day looking
in your windy.”
I felt that this must end here. I rose sternly and
addressed Melons.
“Melons, this is all irrelevant and impertinent to
the case. You took those bananas. Your proposition
regarding Carrots, even if I were inclined to accept
it as credible information, does not alter the material
issue. You took those bananas. The offence
under the statutes of California is felony. How far
Carrots may have been accessory to the fact either
before or after, is not my intention at present to discuss.
The act is complete. Your present conduct
shows the animo furandi to have been equally
clear.”
By the time I had finished this exordium, Melons
had disappeared, as I fully expected.
He never re-appeared. The remorse that I have
experienced for the part I had taken in what I fear
may have resulted in his utter and complete extermination,
alas, he may not know, except through these
pages. For I have never seen him since. Whether
he ran away and went to sea to re-appear at some
future day as the most ancient of mariners, or whether
he buried himself completely in his trousers, I never
shall know. I have read the papers anxiously for
the vain attempt of identifying him as a lost child.
But I never saw or heard of him since. Strange
fears have sometimes crossed my mind that his venerable
appearance may have been actually the result
of senility, and that he may have been gathered
peacefully to his fathers in a green old age. I have
even had doubts of his existence, and have sometimes
thought that he was providentially and mysteriously
offered to fill the void I have before alluded
to. In that hope I have written these pages.
SURPRISING ADVENTURES
OF
MASTER CHARLES SUMMERTON.
At exactly half-past nine o'clock on the morning
of Saturday, August 26th, 1865, Master Charles
Summerton, aged five years, disappeared mysteriously
from his paternal residence on Folsom Street,
San Francisco. At twenty-five minutes past nine he
had been observed, by the butcher, amusing himself
by going through that popular youthful exercise
known as “turning the crab,” a feat in which he was
singularly proficient. At a court of inquiry summarily
held in the back parlor at 10.15, Bridget,
cook, deposed to have detected him at twenty minutes
past nine, in the felonious abstraction of sugar
from the pantry, which, by the same token, had she
known what was a-comin', she'd have never previnted.
Patsey, a shrill-voiced youth from a neighboring
alley, testified to having seen “Chowley,” at half
past nine, in front of the butcher's shop round the
corner, but as this young gentleman chose to throw
been converted into sausages by the butcher, his testimony
was received with some caution by the female
portion of the court, and with downright scorn and
contumely by its masculine members. But whatever
might have been the hour of his departure, it was
certain that from half-past ten A. M. until nine P. M.,
when he was brought home by a policeman, Charles
Summerton was missing. Being naturally of a reticent
disposition, he has since resisted, with but one
exception, any attempt to wrest from him a statement
of his whereabouts during that period. That
exception has been myself. He has related to me
the following in the strictest confidence:
His intention on leaving the door-steps of his
dwelling was to proceed without delay to Van Dieman's
Land, by way of Second and Market streets.
This project was subsequently modified so far as to
permit a visit to Otaheite, where Capt. Cook was
killed. The outfit for his voyage consisted of two
car tickets, five cents in silver, a fishing line, the
brass capping of a spool of cotton, which, in his eyes,
bore some resemblance to metallic currency, and a
Sunday school library ticket. His garments, admirably
adapted to the exigencies of any climate, were
severally, a straw hat with a pink ribbon, a striped
shirt, over which a pair of trousers, uncommonly
wide in comparison to their length, were buttoned,
striped balmoral stockings, which gave his youthful
legs something of the appearance of wintergreen
candy, and copper-toed shoes with iron heels, capable
quality, Master Charley could not help feeling, would
be of infinite service to him in the wilds of Van Dieman's
Land, which, as pictorially represented in his
geography, seemed to be deficient in corner groceries
and matches.
Exactly as the clock struck the half hour, the
short legs and straw hat of Master Charles Summerton
disappeared around the corner. He ran rapidly,
partly by way of inuring himself to the fatigues of
the journey before him, and partly by way of testing
his speed with that of a North Beach car which was
proceeding in his direction. The conductor not being
aware of this generous and lofty emulation, and
being somewhat concerned at the spectacle of a pair
of very short, twinkling legs so far in the rear,
stopped his car and generally assisted the youthful
Summerton upon the platform. From this point a
hiatus of several hours' duration occurs in Master
Charles's narrative. He is under the impression that
he “rode out” not only his two tickets, but that he
became subsequently indebted to the company for several
trips to and from the opposite termini, and that
at last, resolutely refusing to give any explanation
of his conduct, he was finally ejected, much to his
relief, on a street corner. Although, as he informs
us, he felt perfectly satisfied with this arrangement,
he was impelled under the circumstances to hurl after
the conductor an opprobrious appellation which he
had ascertained from Patsey was the correct thing
in such emergencies, and possessed peculiarly exasperating
properties.
We now approach a thrilling part of the narrative,
before which most of the adventures of the “Boys'
Own Book” pale into insignificance. There are
times when the recollection of this adventure causes
Master Charles to break out in a cold sweat, and he
has several times since its occurrence been awakened
by lamentations and outcries in the night season by
merely dreaming of it. On the corner of the street
lay several large empty sugar hogsheads. A few
young gentlemen disported themselves therein, armed
with sticks, with which they removed the sugar
which still adhered to the joints of the staves, and
conveyed it to their mouths. Finding a cask not
yet pre-empted, Master Charles set to work, and for
a few moments reveled in a wild saccharine dream,
whence he was finally roused by an angry voice and
the rapidly retreating footsteps of his comrades. An
ominous sound smote his ear, and the next moment
he felt the cask wherein he lay uplifted and set upright
against the wall. He was a prisoner, but as
yet undiscovered. Being satisfied in his mind that
hanging was the systematic and legalized penalty for
the outrage he had committed, he kept down manfully
the cry that rose to his lips.
In a few moments he felt the cask again lifted by
a powerful hand, which appeared above him at the
edge of his prison, and which he concluded belonged
to the ferocious giant Blunderbore, whose features
and limbs he had frequently met in colored pictures.
Before he could recover from his astonishment, his
cask was placed with several others on a cart, and
describes as being fearful in the extreme. Rolled
around like a pill in a box, the agonies which he
suffered may be hinted at, not spoken. Evidences
of that protracted struggle were visible in his garments,
which were of the consistency of syrup,
and his hair, which for several hours, under the
treatment of hot water, yielded a thin treacle. At
length the cart stopped on one of the wharves,
and the cartman began to unload. As he tilted over
the cask in which Charles lay, an exclamation broke
from his lips, and the edge of the cask fell from his
hands, sliding its late occupant upon the wharf. To
regain his short legs, and to put the greatest possible
distance between himself and the cartman, were his
first movements on regaining his liberty. He did not
stop until he had reached the corner of Front street.
Another blank succeeds in this veracious history.
He cannot remember how or when he found himself
in front of the circus tent. He has an indistinct recollection
of having passed through a long street of
stores which were all closed, and which made him
fear that it was Sunday, and that he had spent a
miserable night in the sugar cask. But he remembers
hearing the sound of music within the tent, and
of creeping on his hands and knees, when no one
was looking, until he passed under the canvas. His
description of the wonders contained within that circle;
of the terrific feats which were performed by a
man on a pole, since practised by him in the back
yard; of the horses, one of which was spotted and
and undefined, of the female equestrians,
whose dresses could only be equaled in magnificence
to the frocks of his sister's doll, of the painted
clown, whose jokes excited a merriment, somewhat
tinged by an undefined fear, was an effort of language
which this pen could but weakly transcribe, and
which no quantity of exclamation points could sufficiently
illustrate. He is not quite certain what followed.
He remembers that almost immediately on
leaving the circus it became dark, and that he fell
asleep, waking up at intervals on the corners of the
streets, on front steps, in somebody's arms, and finally
in his own bed. He was not aware of experiencing
any regret for his conduct, he does not recall feeling
at any time a disposition to go home—he remembers
distinctly that he felt hungry.
He has made this disclosure in confidence. He
wishes it to be respected. He wants to know if you
have five cents about you.
SIDEWALKINGS.
The time occupied in walking to and from my
business I have always found to yield me a certain
mental enjoyment which no other part of the
twenty-four hours could give. Perhaps the physical
exercise may have acted as a gentle stimulant
of the brain, but more probably the comfortable
consciousness that I could not reasonably be expected
to be doing anything else—to be studying
or improving my mind, for instance—always gave
a joyous liberty to my fancy. I once thought it
necessary to employ this interval in doing sums in
arithmetic—in which useful study I was and still
am lamentably deficient—but after one or two attempts
at peripatetic computation, I gave it up. I
am satisfied that much enjoyment is lost to the
world by this nervous anxiety to improve our
leisure moments, which, like the “shining hours”
of Dr. Watts, unfortunately offer the greatest facilities
for idle pleasure. I feel a profound pity for
those misguided beings who are still impelled to
carry text-books with them in cars, omnibuses and
ferry-boats, and who generally manage to defraud
Nature must must have her fallow moments,
when she covers her exhausted fields with flowers
instead of grain. Deny her this, and the next crop
suffers for it. I offer this axiom as some apology
for obtruding upon the reader a few of the speculations
which have engaged my mind during these
daily perambulations.
Few Californians know how to lounge gracefully.
Business habits and a deference to the custom, even
with those who have no business, give an air of restless
anxiety to every pedestrian. The exceptions to
this rule are apt to go to the other extreme, and
wear a defiant, obtrusive kind of indolence which
suggests quite as much inward disquiet and unrest.
The shiftless lassitude of a gambler can never be
mistaken for the lounge of a gentleman. Even the
brokers who loiter upon Montgomery Street at high
noon are not loungers. Look at them closely and
you will see a feverishness and anxiety under the
mask of listlessness. They do not lounge—they lie
in wait. No surer sign, I imagine, of our peculiar
civilization can be found than this lack of repose in
its constituent elements. You cannot keep Californians
quiet even in their amusements. They dodge
in and out of the theatre, opera and lecture-room;
they prefer the street cars to walking because they
think they get along faster. The difference of locomotion
between Broadway, New York, and Montgomery
Street, San Francisco, is a comparative view
of eastern and western civilization.
There is a habit peculiar to many walkers, which
Punch, some years ago, touched upon satirically, but
which seems to have survived the jester's ridicule.
It is that custom of stopping friends in the street, to
whom we have nothing whatever to communicate,
but whom we embarrass, for no other purpose than
simply to show our friendship. Jones meets his
friend Smith, whom he has met in nearly the same
locality but a few hours before. During that interval,
it is highly probable that no event of any importance
to Smith, nor indeed to Jones, which by a
friendly construction Jones could imagine Smith to
be interested in, has occurred, or is likely to occur.
Yet both gentlemen stop and shake hands earnestly.
“Well, how goes it?” remarks Smith with a vague
hope that something may have happened. “So so,”
replies the eloquent JOnes, feeling intuitively the
deep vacuity of his friend answering to his own. A
pause ensues, in which both gentlemen regard each
other with an imbecile smile and a fervent pressure
of the hand. Smith draws a long breath and looks
up the street; Jones sighs heavily and gazes down
the street. Another pause, in which both gentlemen
disengage their respective hands and glance
anxiously around for some conventional avenue of
escape. Finally, Smith (with a sudden assumption
of having forgotten an important engagement,) ejaculates,
“Well, I must be off,”—a remark instantly
echoed by the voluble Jones, and these gentlemen
separate, only to repeat their miserable formula the
next day. In the above example I have compassionately
skillful hands may be protracted to a length which I
shudder to recall. I have sometimes, when an active
participant in these atrocious transactions, lingered in
the hope of saying something natural to my friend,
(feeling that he too was groping in the mazy labyrinths
of his mind for a like expression,) until I have
felt that we ought to have been separated by a
policeman. It is astonishing how far the most
wretched joke will go in these emergencies, and how
it will, as it were, convulsively detach the two cohering
particles. I have laughed (albeit hysterically)
at some witticism under cover of which I escaped,
that five minutes afterward I could not perceive possessed
a grain of humor. I would advise any person
who may fall into this pitiable strait, that, next
to getting in the way of a passing dray and being
forcibly disconnected, a joke is the most efficacious.
A foreign phrase often may be tried with success: I
have sometimes known Au revoir pronounced “O-reveer,”
to have the effect (as it ought) of severing
friends.
But this is a harmless habit compared to a certain
reprehensible practice in which sundry feeble-minded
young men indulge. I have been stopped in the
street and enthusiastically accosted by some fashionable
young man who has engaged me in animated
conversation, until (quite accidentally) a certain
young belle would pass, whom my friend, of course,
saluted. As, by a strange coincidence, this occurred
several times in the course of the week, and as my
flagged after the lady had passed, I am forced to believe
that the deceitful young wretch actually used
me as a conventional background to display the
graces of his figure to the passing fair. When I detected
the trick, of course I made a point of keeping
my friend, by strategic movements, with his back toward
the young lady, while I bowed to her myself.
Since then, I understand that it is a regular custom
of these callow youths, to encounter each other, with
simulated cordiality, some paces in front of the
young lady they wish to recognize, so that she cannot
possibly cut them. The corner of California and
Montgomery Streets is their favorite haunt. They
may be easily detected by their furtive expression of
eye, which betrays them even in the height of their
apparent enthusiasm.
Speaking of eyes, you can generally settle the
average gentility and good breeding of the people
you meet in the street by the manner in which they
return or evade your glance. “A gentleman,” as the
Autocrat has wisely said, is always “calm-eyed.”
There is just enough abstraction in his look to denote
his individual power and the capacity for self-contemplation,
while he is, nevertheless, quietly and unobtrusively
observant. He does not seek, neither does he
evade, your observation. Snobs and prigs do the
first; bashful and mean people do the second. There
are some men who, on meeting your eye, immediately
assume an expression quite different from the one
which they previously wore, which, whether an improvement
Perhaps they fancy they are betraying
something. There are others who return your look
with unnecessary defiance, which suggests a like concealment.
The symptoms of the eye are generally
borne out in the figure. A man is very apt to betray
his character by the manner in which he appropriates
his part of the sidewalk. The man who resolutely
keeps the middle of the pavement, and deliberately
brushes against you, you may be certain
would take the last piece of pie at the hotel table,
and empty the cream jug on its way to your cup.
The man who sidles by you, keeping close to the
houses, and selecting the easiest planks, manages to
slip through life in some such way, and to evade
its sternest duties. The awkward man, who gets
in your way, and throws you back upon the man
behind you, and so manages to derange the harmonious
procession of an entire block, is very apt to
do the same thing in political and social economy.
The inquisitive man, who deliberately shortens his
pace, so that he may participate in the confidence
you impart to your companion, has an eye not
unfamiliar to keyholes, and probably opens his
wife's letters. The loud man, who talks with the
intention of being overheard, is the same egotist
elsewhere. If there was any justice in Iago's
sneer, that there were some “so weak of soul that
in their sleep they mutter their affairs,” what shall
be said of the walking reverie-babblers? I have
met men who were evidently rolling over, “like a
were about to make, and others who were framing
curses. I remember once that, while walking behind
an apparently respectable old gentleman, he
suddenly uttered the exclamation, “Well, I'm
d—d!” and then quietly resumed his usual manner.
Whether he had at that moment become impressed
with a truly orthodox disbelief in his ultimate salvation,
or whether he was simply indignant, I never
could tell.
I have been hesitating for some time to speak—
or if indeed to speak at all—of that lovely and critic-defying
sex, whose bright eyes and voluble prattle
have not been without effect in tempering the austerities
of my peripatetic musing. I have been humbly
thankful that I have been permitted to view their
bright dresses and those charming bonnets which
seem to have brought the birds and flowers of spring
within the dreary limits of the town, and—I trust
I shall not be deemed unkind in saying it—my
pleasure was not lessened by the reflection that the
display, to me at least, was inexpensive. I have
walked in—and I fear occasionally on—the train of
the loveliest of her sex who has preceded me. If I
have sometimes wondered why two young ladies always
began to talk vivaciously on the approach of
any good-looking fellow; if I have wondered whether
the mirror-like qualities of all large show-windows
at all influenced their curiosity regarding silks and
calicoes; if I have ever entertained the same ungentlemanly
thought concerning daguerreotype show cases;
passed between two pretty women—more searching,
exhaustive and sincere than any of our feeble ogles;
if I have ever committed these or any other impertinences,
it was only to retire beaten and discomfitted,
and to confess that masculine philosophy, while
it soars beyond Sirius and the ring of Saturn, stops
short at the steel periphery which encompasses the
simplest school-girl.
A BOYS' DOG.
As I lift my eyes from the paper, I observe a dog
lying on the steps of the opposite house. His attitude
might induce passers-by and casual observers to
believe him to belong to the people who live there,
and to accord to him a certain standing position. I
have seen visitors pat him, under the impression that
they were doing an act of courtesy to his master—he
lending himself to the fraud by hypocritical contortions
of the body. But his attitude is one of deceit
and simulation. He has neither master nor habitation.
He is a very Pariah and outcast; in brief “A
Boys' Dog.”
There is a degree of hopeless and irreclaimable
vagabondage expressed in this epithet, which may
not be generally understood. Only those who are
familiar with the roving nature and predatory instincts
of boys in large cities will appreciate its strength. It
is the lowest step in the social scale to which a respectable
canine can descend. A blind man's dog,
or the companion of a knife-grinder, is comparatively
elevated. He at least owes allegiance to but one
master. But the Boys' Dog is the thrall of an entire
of the smallest imp in the neighborhood, attached to
and serving not the individual boy so much as the
boy element and principle. In their active sports—
in small thefts, raids into back-yards, window-breaking
and other minor juvenile recreations—he is a full
participant. In this way he is the reflection of
the wickedness of many masters, without possessing
the virtues or peculiarities of any particular one.
If leading a “dog's life” be considered a peculiar
phase of human misery, the life of a Boys' dog is
still more infelicitous. He is associated in all
schemes of wrong-doing, and unless he be a dog of
experience, is always the scape-goat. He never
shares the booty of his associates. In absence of
legitimate amusement, he is considered fair game for
his companions; and I have seen him reduced to the
ignominy of having a tin kettle tied to his tail. His
ears and tail have generally been docked to suit the
caprice of the unholy band of which he is a member;
and if he has any spunk, he is invariably pitted
against larger dogs in mortal combat. He is poorly
fed and hourly abused; the reputation of his associates
debars him from outside sympathies; and once
a Boys' dog, he cannot change his condition. He is
not unfrequently sold into slavery by his inhumam
companions. I remember once to have been accosted
on my own doorsteps by a couple of precocious
youths, who offered to sell me a dog which they
were then leading by a rope. The price was extremely
moderate, being, if I remember rightly, but
have lately fallen into their wicked hands, and anxious
to reclaim him from the degradation of becoming
a Boys' dog, I was about to conclude the bargain,
when I saw a look of intelligence pass between
the dog and his two masters. I promptly stopped
all negotiation, and drove the youthful swindlers and
their four-footed accomplice from my presence. The
whole thing was perfectly plain. The dog was an
old, experienced, and hardened Boys' dog, and I was
perfectly satisfied that he would run away and rejoin
his old companions at the first opportunity.
This I afterwards learned he did, on the occasion of
a kind-hearted but unsophisticated neighbor buying
him: and a few days ago I saw him exposed for sale
by those two Arcadians, in another neighborhood,
having been bought and paid for half-a-dozen times in
this.
But, it will be asked, if the life of a Boys' dog is
so unhappy, why do they enter upon such an unenviable
situation, and why do they not dissolve the partnership
when it becomes unpleasant? I will confess
that I have been often puzzled by this question. For
some time I could not make up my mind whether
their unholy alliance was the result of the influence
of the dog on the boy, or vice versa, and which was
the weakest and most impressible nature. I am satisfied
now that, at first, the dog is undoubtedly influenced
by the boy, and, as it were, is led, while yet a
puppy, from the paths of canine rectitude by artful
and designing boys. As he grows older and more
becomes a willing decoy, and takes delight in leading
boyish innocence astray—in beguiling children
to play truant, and thus revenges his own degradation
on the boy nature generally. It is in this relation,
and in regard to certain unhallowed practices I
have detected him in, that I deem it proper to expose
to parents and guardians the danger to which their
offspring are exposed by the Boys' dog.
The Boys' dog lays his plans artfully. He begins
to influence the youthful mind by suggestions of unrestrained
freedom and frolic which he offers in his
own person. He will lie in wait at the garden gate
for a very small boy, and endeavor to lure him outside
its sacred precincts, by gambolling and jumping
a little beyond the inclosure. He will set off on an
imaginary chase and run around the block in a
perfectly frantic manner, and then return, breathless,
to his former position, with a look as of one who
would say, “There, you see how perfectly easy it's
done!” Should the unhappy infant find it difficult
to resist the effect which this glimpse of the area of
freedom produces, and step beyond the gate, from
that moment he is utterly demoralized. The Boys'
dog owns him body and soul. Straightway he is led
by the deceitful brute into the unhallowed circle of
his Bohemian masters. Sometimes the unfortunate
boy, if he be very small, turns up eventually at the
station-house as a lost child. Whenever I meet a
stray boy in the street looking utterly bewildered
and astonished, I generally find a Boys' dog lurking
lost children, I always add mentally to the description,
“was last seen in company with a Boys' dog.”
Nor is his influence wholly confined to small boys.
I have seen him waiting patiently for larger boys
on the way to school, and by artful and sophistical
practices inducing them to play truant. I have seen
him lying at the school-house door, with the intention
of enticing the children on their way home to
distant and remote localities. He has led many an
unsuspecting boy to the wharves and quays by assuming
the character of a water-dog, which he was not,
and again has induced others to go with him on a
gunning excursion by pretending to be a sporting
dog, in which quality he was knowingly deficient.
Unscrupulous, hypocritical and deceitful, he has won
many children's hearts by answering to any name
they might call him, attaching himself to their persons
until they got into trouble, and deserting them
at the very moment they most needed his assistance.
I have seen him rob small school-boys of their dinners
by pretending to knock them down by accident;
and have seen larger boys in turn dispossess him of
his ill-gotten booty, for their own private gratification.
From being a tool, he has grown to be an accomplice—through
much imposition he has learned
to impose on others—in his best character he is simply
a vagabond's vagabond.
I could find it in my heart to pity him, as he lies
there through the long summer afternoon, enjoying
brief intervals of tranquillity and rest which he
For a shrill whistle is heard in the streets, the boys
are coming home from school, and he is startled from
his dreams by a deftly-thrown potato which hits him
on the head, and awakens him to the stern reality
that he is now and forever—a Boys' dog.
CHARITABLE REMINISCENCES.
As the new Benevolent Association has had the
effect of withdrawing beggars from the streets, and as
Professional Mendicancy bids fair to be presently
ranked with the Lost Arts, to preserve some records
of this noble branch of industry, I have endeavored to
recall certain traits and peculiarities of individual
members of the order whom I have known, and whose
forms I now miss from their accustomed haunts. In
so doing, I confess to feeling a certain regret at this
decay of Professional Begging, for I hold the theory
that mankind are bettered by the occasional spectacle
of misery, whether simulated or not, on the same
principle that our sympathies are enlarged by the
fictitious woes of the Drama, though we know that
the actors are insincere. Perhaps I am indiscreet in
saying that I have rewarded the artfully dressed and
well acted performance of the begging impostor
through the same impulse that impelled me to expend
a dollar in witnessing the counterfeited sorrows
of poor “Triplet,” as represented by Charles Wheatleigh.
I did not quarrel with deceit in either case.
the moral responsibility rested with the performer.
The principal figure that I now mourn over as lost
forever is one that may have been familiar to many
of my readers. It was that of a dark-complexioned,
black-eyed, foreign-looking woman, who supported
in her arms a sickly baby. As a pathological phenomen
on the baby was especially interesting, having
presented the Hippocratic face and other symptoms
of immediate dissolution, without change for the
past three years. The woman never verbally solicited
arms. Her appearance was always mute, mysterious
and sudden. She made no other appeal than
that which the dramatic tableau of herself and baby
suggested, with an outstretched hand and deprecating
eye sometimes superadded. She usually stood in
my doorway, silent and patient, intimating her presence,
if my attention were preoccupied, by a slight
cough from her baby, whom I shall always believe
had its part to play in this little pantomime, and generally
obeyed a secret signal from the maternal hand.
It was useless for me to refuse alms, to plead business
or affect inattention. She never moved; her
position was always taken with an appearance of
latent capabilities of endurance and experience in
waiting which never failed to impress me with awe
and the futility of any hope of escape. There was also
something in the reproachful expression of her eye,
which plainly said to me, as I bent over my paper,
“Go on with your mock sentimentalities and simulated
pathos; portray the imaginary sufferings of
but look you, sir, here is real misery! Here
is genuine suffering!” I confess that this artful suggestion
usually brought me down. In three minutes
after she had thus invested the citadel, I usually surrendered
at discretion without a gun having been
fired on either side. She received my offering and
retired as mutely and mysteriously as she had appeared.
Perhaps it was well for me that she did
not know her strength. I might have been forced,
had this terrible woman been conscious of her real
power, to have borrowed money which I could not
pay, or have forged a check to purchase immunity
from her awful presence. I hardly know if I make
myself understood, and yet I am unable to define
my meaning more clearly when I say that there was
something in her glance which suggested to the person
appealed to, when in the presence of others, a
certain idea of some individual responsibility for her
sufferings, which, while it never failed to affect him
with a mingled sense of ludicrousness and terror, always
made an impression of unqualified gravity on
the minds of the bystanders. As she has disappeared
within the last month, I imagine that she has found a
home at the San Francisco Benevolent Association—
at least, I cannot conceive of any charity, however
guarded by wholesome checks or sharp-eyed almoners,
that could resist that mute apparition. I should
like to go there and inquire about her and also learn
if the baby was convalescent or dead, but I am satisfied
that she would rise up a mute and reproachful
would end in the Association instantly transferring
her to my hands.
My next familiar mendicant was a vendor of
printed ballads. These effusions were so stale, atrocious,
and unsalable in their character, that it was
easy to detect that hypocrisy, which—in imitation of
more ambitious beggary—veiled the real eleemosynary
appeal, under the thin pretext of offering an
equivalent. This beggar—an aged female in a rusty
bonnet—I unconsciously precipitated upon myself in
an evil moment. On our first meeting, while distractedly
turning over the ballads, I came upon a certain
production entitled, I think, “The Fire Zouave,”
and was struck with the truly patriotic and American
manner in which “Zouave” was made to rhyme in
different stanzas with “grave, brave, save and glaive.”
As I purchased it at once, with a gratified expression
of countenance, it soon became evident that the
act was misconstrued by my poor friend, who, from
that moment, never ceased to haunt me. Perhaps,
in the whole course of her precarious existence, she
had never before sold a ballad. My solitary purchase
evidently made me, in her eyes, a customer, and
in a measure exalted her vocation; so, thereafter, she
regularly used to look in at my door, with a chirping
confident air, and the question, “Any more songs
to-day?” as though it were some necessary article of
daily consumption. I never took any more of her
songs, although that circumstance did not shake her
faith in my literary taste; my abstinence from this
charitable motives. She was finally absorbed by the
S. F. B. A., who have probably made a proper disposition
of her effects. She was a little old woman,
of Celtic origin, predisposed to melancholy, and looking
as if she had read most of her ballads.
My next reminiscence takes the shape of a very
seedy individual, who had, for three or four years,
been vainly attempting to get back to his relatives in
Illinois, where sympathizing friends and a comfortable
alms-house awaited him. Only a few dollars, he
informed me—the uncontributed remainder of the
amount necessary to purchase a steerage ticket—
stood in his way. These last few dollars seem to
have been most difficult to get—and he had wandered
about, a sort of antithetical Flying Dutchman, fore-ever
putting to sea, yet never getting away from
shore. He was a “49-er,” and had recently been
blown up in a tunnel, or had fallen down a shaft, I
forget which. This sad accident obliged him to use
large quantities of whisky as a liniment, which, he
informed me, occasioned the mild fragrance which
his garments exhaled. Though belonging to the
same class, he was not to be confounded with the unfortunate
miner who could not get back to his claim
without pecuniary assistance, or the desolate Italian,
who hopelessly handed you a document in a foreign
language, very much bethumbed and illegible—which,
in your ignorance of the tongue, you couldn't help
suspiciously feeling might have been a price current
—but which you could see was proffered as an excuse
me, without speaking, an open document, which
bore the marks of having been carried in the greasy
lining of a hat, I always felt safe in giving him a
quarter and dismissing him without further questioning.
I always noticed that these circular letters,
when written in the vernacular, were remarkable for
their beautiful caligraphy and grammatical inaccuracy,
and that they all seemed to have been written
by the same hand. Perhaps indigence exercises a
peculiar and equal effect upon the handwriting.
I recall a few occasional mendicants whose faces
were less familiar. One afternoon a most extraordinary
Irishman, with a black eye, a bruised hat, and
other traces of past enjoyment, waited upon me with
a pitiful story of destitution and want, and concluded
by requesting the usual trifle. I replied, with some
severity, that if I gave him a dime he would probably
spend it for drink. “Be Gorra! but you're
roight—I wad that!” he answered promptly. I was
so much taken aback by this unexpected exhibition
of frankness that I instantly handed over the dime.
It seems that Truth had survived the wreck of his
other virtues; he did get drunk, and, impelled by a
like conscientious sense of duty, exhibited himself to
me in that state, a few hours after, to show that my
bounty had not been misapplied.
In spite of the peculiar characters of these reminiscences,
I cannot help feeling a certain regret at the
decay of Professional Mendicancy. Perhaps it may
be owing to a lingering trace of that youthful superstition
fairy, and invested their calling with a mysterious
awe. Perhaps it may be from a belief that there is
something in the old-fashioned alms-givings and actual
contact with misery, that is wholesome for both
donor and recipient, and that any system which interposes
a third party between them is only putting
on a thick glove, which, while it preserves us from
contagion, absorbs and deadens the kindly pressure of
our hand. It is a very pleasant thing to purchase relief
from annoyance and trouble of having to weigh
the claims of an afflicted neighbor. As I turn over
these printed tickets, which the courtesy of San
Francisco Benevolent Association has—by a slight
stretch of the imagination in supposing that any
sane unfortunate might rashly seek relief from a
newspaper office—conveyed to these editorial hands,
I cannot help wondering whether, when in our
last extremity we come to draw upon the Immeasurable
Bounty, it will be necessary to present a ticket.
“SEEING THE STEAMER OFF.”
I have sometimes thought, while watching the
departure of an Eastern steamer, that the act of parting
from friends—so generally one of bitterness and
despondency—is made by an ingenious Californian
custom to yield a pleasurable excitement. This luxury
of leave-taking in which most Californians indulge,
is often protracted to the hauling in of the
gang-plank. Those last words, injunctions, promises,
and embraces, which are mournful and depressing
perhaps, in that privacy demanded on other occasions,
are here, by reason of their very publicity, of an
edifying and exhilarating character. A parting kiss
blown from the deck of a steamer into a miscellaneous
crowd, of course loses much of that sacred solemnity
with which foolish superstition is apt to invest
it. A broadside of endearing epithets, even when
properly aimed and apparently raking the whole
wharf, is apt to be impotent and harmless. A husband
who prefers to embrace his wife for the last
time at the door of her stateroom, and finds himself
the centre of an admiring group of unconcerned
feeling save that of ludicrousness which the situation
suggests. The mother, parting from her offspring,
should become a Roman matron under the like influences;
the lover who takes leave of his sweetheart,
is not apt to mar the general hilarity by any emotional
folly. In fact, this system of delaying our parting
sentiments until the last moment—this removal of
domestic scenery and incident to a public theatre—
may be said to be worthy of a stoical and democratic
people, and is an event in our lives which may be
shared with the humblest coal-passer, or itinerant
vendor of oranges. It is a return to that classic out-of-door
experience and mingling of public and domestic
economy which so ennobled the straight-nosed
Athenian.
So universal is this desire to be present at the departure
of any steamer that, aside from the regular
crowd of loungers who make their appearance confessedly
only to look on, there are others who take
advantage of the slightest intimacy to go through the
leave-taking formula. People whom you have quite
forgotten, people to whom you have been lately introduced,
suddenly and unexpectedly make their
appearance and wring your hands with fervor. The
friend, long estranged, forgives you nobly at the last
moment, to take advantage of this glorious opportunity
of “seeing you off.” Your bootmaker, tailor,
and hatter—haply with no ulterior motives and
unaccompanied by official friends—visit you with
enthusiasm. You find great difficulty in detaching
which they resolutely seat themselves, up to the
moment when the paddles are moving, and you are
haunted continually by an ill-defined idea that they
may be carried off, and foisted on you—with the
payment of their passage, which, under the circumstances,
you could not refuse—for the rest of the
voyage. Acquaintances will make their appearance
at the most inopportune moments, and from the most
unexpected places—dangling from hawsers, climbing
up paddle-boxes, and crawling through cabin windows
at the imminent peril of their lives. You are
nervous and crushed by this added weight of responsibility.
Should you be a stranger, you will find any
number of people on board, who will cheerfully and
at a venture take leave of you on the slightest advances
made on your part. A friend of mine
assures me that he once parted, with great enthusiasm
and cordiality, from a party of gentlemen, to him
personally unknown, who had apparently mistaken
his state-room. This party—evidently connected
with some fire company—on comparing notes on the
wharf, being somewhat dissatisfied with the result of
their performances, afterward rendered my friend's
position on the hurricane deck one of extreme peril
and inconvenience, by reason of skillfully projected
oranges and apples, not unaccompanied with invective.
Yet there is certainly something to interest us in
the examination of that cheerless damp closet, whose
painted wooden walls no furniture or company can
many vapid days and restless nights. The sight
of these apartments, yelept state-rooms—Heaven
knows why, except it be from their want of coziness
—is full of keen reminiscences to most Californians
who have not outgrown the memories of that dreary
interval when, in obedience to Nature's wise compensations,
homesickness was blotted out by seasickness,
and both at last resolved into a chaotic and distempered
dream, whose details we now recognize. The
steamer chair that we used to drag out upon the narrow
strip of deck and doze in, over the pages of a
well-thumbed novel; the deck itself—of afternoons,
redolent with the skins of oranges and bananas—of
mornings, damp with salt-water and mopping; the
netted bulwark, smelling of tar in the tropics, and
fretted on the windward side with little saline crystals:
the villainously compounded odors of victuals
from the pantry, and oil from the machinery; the
young lady that we used to flirt with, and with whom
we shared our last novel, adorned with marginal annotation;
our own chum; our own bore; the man
who was never sea-sick; the two events of the day,
breakfast and dinner, and the dreary interval between;
the tremendous importance given to trifling
events and trifling people; the young lady who kept
a journal; the newspaper, published on board, filled
with mild pleasantries and impertinences, elsewhere
unendurable; the young lady who sang; the wealthy
passenger; the popular passenger; the—
[Let us sit down for a moment until this qualmishness,
quality of the atmosphere seems to produce, has
passed away. What becomes of our steamer friends?
Why are we now so apathetic about them? Why is
it that we drift away from them so unconcernedly,
forgetting even their names and faces? Why, when
we do remember them, do we look at them so suspiciously,
with an undefined idea that, in the unrestrained
freedom of the voyage, they become possessed
of some confidence and knowledge of our weaknesses
that we never should have imparted? Did
we make any such confessions? Perish the thought.
The popular man, however, is not now so popular.
We have heard finer voices than that of the young
lady who sang so sweetly. Our chum's fascinating
qualities, somehow, have deteriorated on land; so
have those of the fair young novel-reader, now the
wife of an honest miner in Virginia City.]
—The passenger who made so many trips, and exhibited
a reckless familiarity with the officers; the
officers themselves, now so modest and undemonstrative,
a few hours later so all-powerful and important—these
are among the reminiscences of most
Californians, and these are to be remembered among
the experiences of our friend. Yet he feels as we
all do, that his past experience will be of profit to
him, and has already the confident air of an old voyager.
As you stand on the wharf again, and listen to
the cries of itinerant fruit vendors, you wonder why
it is that grief at parting and the unpleasant novelties
and apples, even at ruinously low prices. Perhaps
it may be, figuratively, the last offering of the fruitful
earth, as the passenger commits himself to the
bosom of the sterile and unproductive ocean. Even
while the wheels are moving and the lines are cast off,
some hardy apple merchant, mounted on the top of
a pile, concludes a trade with a steerage passenger—
twenty feet interposing between buyer and seller—
and achieves, under these difficulties, the delivery of
his wares. Handkerchiefs wave, hurried orders
mingle with parting blessings, and the steamer is
“off.” As you turn your face cityward, and glance
hurriedly around at the retreating crowd, you will
see a reflection of your own wistful face in theirs,
and read the solution of one of the problems which
perplex the California enthusiast. Before you lies
San Francisco, with her hard angular outlines, her
brisk, invigorating breezes, her bright, but unsympathetic
sunshine, her restless and energetic population;
behind you fades the recollection of changeful
but honest skies; of extremes of heat and cold, modified
and made enjoyable through social and physical
laws, of pastoral landscapes, of accessible Nature in
her kindliest forms, of inherited virtues, of long-tested
customs and habits, of old friends and old
faces—of Home!
NEIGHBORHOODS I HAVE MOVED FROM.
1. I
A bay window once settled the choice of my
house and compensated for many of its inconveniences.
When the chimney smoked, or the doors alternately
shrunk and swelled, resisting any forcible attempt
to open them, or opening of themselves with
ghostly deliberation, or when suspicious blotches
appeared on the ceiling in rainy weather, there was
always the bay window to turn to for comfort. And
the view was a fine one. Alcatraz, Lime Point, Fort
Point and Saucelito were plainly visible over a restless
expanse of water that changed continually, glittering
in the sunlight, darkening in rocky shadow,
or sweeping in mimic waves on a miniature beach
below.
Although at first the bay window was supposed to
be sacred to myself and my writing materials, in
obedience to some organic law, it by-and-bye became
a general lounging-place. A rocking-chair and
crochet-basket one day found their way there. Then
interenchments of colored worsteds and spools of
cotton, from which he was only dislodged by concerted
assault, and carried lamenting into captivity.
A subtle glamour crept over all who came within
its influence. To apply oneself to serious work there
was an absurdity. An incoming ship, a gleam on
the water, a cloud lingering about Tamaulipas, were
enough to distract the attention. Reading or writing,
the bay window was always showing something
to be looked at. Unfortunately, these views were
not always pleasant, but the window gave equal
prominence and importance to all, without respect to
quality.
The landscape in the vicinity was unimproved,
but not rural. The adjacent lots had apparently just
given up bearing scrub-oaks, but had not seriously
taken to bricks and mortar. In one direction the
vista was closed by the Home of the Inebriates, not
in itself a cheerful-looking, building, and, as the apparent
terminus of a ramble in a certain direction,
having all the effect of a moral lesson. To a certain
extent, however, this building was an imposition.
The enthusiastic members of my family, who confidently
expected to see its inmates hilariously disporting
themselves at its windows in the different stages
of inebriation portrayed by the late W. E. Burton
were much disappointed. The Home was reticent of
its secrets. The County Hospital, also in range of
the bay window, showed much more animation. At
certain hours of the day convalescents passed in review
This spectacle was the still more depressing from a
singular lack of sociability that appeared to prevail
among them. Each man was encompassed by the
impenetrable atmosphere of his own peculiar suffering.
They did not talk or walk together. From
the window I have seen half a dozen sunning themselves
against a wall within a few feet of each other,
to all appearance utterly oblivious of the fact. Had
they but quarreled or fought—anything would have
been better than this horrible apathy.
The lower end of the street on which the bay window
was situate, opened invitingly from a popular
thoroughfare; and after beckoning the unwary stranger
into its recesses, ended unexpectedly at a frightful
precipice. On Sundays, when the travel North-Beachwards
was considerable, the bay window delighted
in the spectacle afforded by unhappy pedestrians
who were seduced into taking this street as a
short cut somewhere else. It was amusing to notice
how these people invariably, on coming to the precipice,
glanced upward to the bay window and endeavored
to assume a careless air before they retraced
their steps, whistling ostentatiously, as if they had
previously known all about it. One high-spirited
young man in particular, being incited thereto by a
pair of mischievous bright eyes in an opposite window,
actually descended this fearful precipice rather
than return, to the great peril of life and limb, and
manifest injury to his Sunday clothes.
Dogs, goats and horses constituted the fauna of
of their normal condition, they still evinced a tender
attachment to man and his habitations. Spirited
steeds got up extempore races on the sidewalks, turning
the street into a miniature Corso; dogs wrangled
in the areas; while from the hill beside the house' a
goat browsed peacefully upon my wife's geraniums
in the flower-pots of the second-story window. “We
had a fine hail-storm last night,” remarked a newly-arrived
neighbor, who had just moved into the adjoining
house. It would have been a pity to set him right,
as he was quite enthusiastic about the view and the
general sanitary qualifications of the locality. So I
didn't tell him anything about the goats who were in
the habit of using his house as a stepping stone to
the adjoining hill.
But the locality was remarkably healthy. People
who fell down the embankments found their wounds
heal rapidly in the steady sea breeze. Ventilation
was complete and thorough. The opening of the
bay window produced a current of wholesome air
which effectually removed all noxious exhalations,
together with the curtains, the hinges of the back
door, and the window shutters. Owing to this peculiarity,
some of my writings acquired an extensive
circulation and publicity in the neighborhood, which
years in another locality might not have produced.
Several articles of wearing apparel, which were mysteriously
transposed from our clothes-line to that of
an humble though honest neighbor, was undoubtedly
the result of these sanitary winds. Yet in spite
of these advantages I found it convenient in a few
communicate in other papers.
2. II.
“A house with a fine garden and extensive shrubbery,
in a genteel neighborhood,” were, if I remember
rightly, the general terms of an advertisement
which once decided my choice of a dwelling. I
should add that this occurred at an early stage of my
household experience, when I placed a trustful reliance
in advertisements. I have since learned that
the most truthful people are apt to indulge a slight
vein of exaggeration in describing their own possessions,
as though the mere circumstance of going into
print were an excuse for a certain kind of mendacity.
But I did not fully awaken to this fact until a much
later period, when, in answering an advertisement
which described a highly advantageous tenement, I
was referred to the house I then occupied, and from
which a thousand inconveniences were impelling me
to move.
The “fine garden” alluded to was not large, but
contained several peculiarly-shaped flower beds. I
was at first struck with the singular resemblance
which they bore to the mutton-chops that are usually
brought on the table at hotels and restaurants—a resemblance
the more striking from the sprigs of parsley
which they produced freely. One plat in particular
reminded me, not unpleasantly, of a peculiar
cake, known to my boyhood as a bolivar. The
a man of original æsthetic ideas, had banked up one
of these beds with bright-colored sea-shells, so that
in rainy weather it suggested an aquarium, and offered
the elements of botanical and conchological
study in pleasing juxtaposition. I have since thought
that the fish geraniums, which it also bore to a surprising
extent, were introduced originally from some
such idea of consistency. But it was very pleasant,
after dinner, to ramble up and down the gravelly
paths, (whose occasional boulders reminded me of
the dry bed of a somewhat circuitous mining stream,)
smoking a cigar, or inhaling the rich aroma of fennel,
or occasionally stopping to pluck one of the holly-hocks
with which the garden abounded. The prolific
qualities of this plant alarmed us greatly, for
although, in the first transport of enthusiasm, my
wife planted several different kinds of flower seeds,
nothing ever came up but hollyhocks; and although,
impelled by the same laudable impulse, I procured
a copy of Downing's Landscape Gardening, and a few
gardening tools, and worked for several hours in the
garden, my efforts were equally futile.
The extensive shrubbery consisted of several
dwarfed trees. One was very weak young weeping
willow, so very limp and maudlin, and so evidently
bent on establishing its reputation, that it had to be
tied up against the house for support. The dampness
of that portion of the house was usually attributed
to the presence of this lachrymose shrub. And
to these a couple of highly objectionable trees, known,
I think, by the name of Malva, which made an inordinate
shedding, and one or two dwarf oaks, with
scaly leaves and a generally spiteful exterior, and
you have what was not inaptly termed by one Milesian
handmaid “the scrubbery.”
The gentility of our neighbor suffered a blight
from the unwholesome vicinity of McGinnis Court.
This court was a kind of cul de sac that, on being
penetrated, discovered a primitive people living in
a state of barbarous freedom, and apparently spending
the greater portion of their lives on their own
door-steps. Many of those details of the toilette which
a popular prejudice restricts to the dressing-room in
other localities, were here performed in the open court
without fear and without reproach. Early in the week
the court was hid in a choking, soapy mist, which
arose from innumerable wash-tubs. This was followed
in a day or two later by an extraordinary exhibition
of wearing apparel of divers colors, fluttering
on lines like a display of bunting on ship-board,
and whose flapping in the breeze was like irregular
discharges of musketry. It was evident also that the
court exercised a demoralizing influence over the
whole neighborhood. A sanguine property-owner
once put up a handsome dwelling on the corner of
our street, and lived therein; but although he appeared
frequently an his balcony, clad in a bright
crimson dressing-gown, which made him look like
a tropical bird of some rare and gorgeous species, he
failed to woo any kindred dressing-gown to the vicinity,
and only provoked opprobrious epithets from
and on going by the house one day, I noticed a
bill of “Rooms to let, with board,” posted conspicuously
on the Corinthian columns of the porch. McGinnis
Court had triumphed. An interchange of
civilities at once took place between the court and
the servants' area of the palatial mansion, and some of
the young men boarders exchange playful slang with
the adolescent members of the court. From that moment
we felt that our claims to gentility were forever
abandoned.
Yet, we enjoyed intervals of unalloyed contentment.
When the twilight toned down the hard outlines
of the oaks, and made shadowy clumps and
formless masses of other bushes, it was quite romantic
to sit by the window and inhale the faint, sad
odor of the fennel in the walks below. Perhaps this
economical pleasure was much enhanced by a picture
in my memory, whose faded colors the odor of
this humble plant never failed to restore. So I often
sat there of evenings and closed my eyes until the
forms and benches of a country school-room came
back to me, redolent with the incense of fennel covertly
stowed away in my desk, and gazed again in silent
rapture on the round, red cheeks and long black
braids of that peerless creature whose glance had often
caused my cheeks to glow over the preternatural
collar, which at that period of my boyhood it was my
pride and privilege to wear. As I fear I may be
often thought hypercritical and censorious in these
articles, I am willing to record this as one of the advantages
nor chargeable in the rent. May the
present tenant, who is a stock-broker, and who impresses
me with the idea of having always been called
“Mr.” from his cradle up, enjoy this advantage,
and try sometimes to remember he was a boy!
3. III.
Soon after I moved into Happy Valley I was
struck with the remarkable infelicity of its title.
Generous as Californians are in the use of adjectives,
this passed into the domain of irony. But I was inclined
to think it sincere—the production of a weak
but gushing mind, just as the feminine nomenclature
of streets in the vicinity was evidently bestowed by
one in habitual communion with “Friendship's Gifts”
and “Affection's Offerings.”
Our house on Laura Matilda Street looked somewhat
like a toy Swiss Cottage—a style of architecture
so prevalent, that in walking down the block it
was quite difficult to resist an impression of fresh
glue and pine shavings. The few shade trees might
have belonged originally to those oval Christmas
boxes which contain toy villages; and even the people
who sat by the windows had a stiffness that made
them appear surprisingly unreal and artificial. A
little dog belonging to a neighbor was known to the
members of my household by the name of “Glass,”
from the general suggestion he gave of having been
these illustrations of the dapper nicety of
our neighborhood—a neatness and conciseness which
I think has a general tendency to belittle, dwarf and
contract their objects. For we gradually fell into
small ways and narrow ideas, and to some extent
squared the round world outside to the correct angles
of Laura Matilda Street.
One reason for this insincere quality may have
been the fact that the very foundations of our neighborhood
were artificial. Laura Matilda Street was
“made ground.” The land, not yet quite reclaimed,
was continually struggling with its old enemy. We
had not been long in our new home before we found
an older tenant, not yet wholly divested of his
rights, who sometimes showed himself in clammy
perspiration on the basement walls, whose damp
breath chilled our dining-room, and in the night
struck a mortal chilliness through the house. There
were no patent fastenings that could keep him out—
no writ of unlawful detainer that could eject him.
In the winter his presence was quite palpable; he
sapped the roots of the trees, he gurgled under the
kitchen floor, he wrought an unwholesome greenness
on the side of the verandah. In summer he became
invisible, but still exercised a familiar influence over
the locality. He planted little stitches in the small
of the back, sought out old aches and weak joints,
and sportively punched the tenants of the Swiss
Cottage under the ribs. He inveigled little children
to play with him, but his plays generally ended in
He sometimes followed strong men about
until they sickened suddenly and took to their beds.
But he kept the green-plants in good order, and was
very fond of verdure, bestowing it even upon lath
and plaster and soulless stone. He was generally
invisible, as I have said; but some time after I had
moved, I saw him one morning from the hill, stretching
his grey wings over the valley, like some fabulous
vampire, who had spent the night sucking the
wholesome juices of the sleepers below, and was
sluggish from the effects of his repast. It was then
that I recognized him as Malaria, and knew his
abode to be the dread Valley of the shadow of Miasma—miscalled
the Happy Valley!
On week days there was a pleasant melody of boiler-making
from the foundries, and the gas works in the
vicinity sometimes lent a mild perfume to the breeze.
Our street was usually quiet, however—a foot-ball
being sufficient to draw the inhabitants to their front
windows, and to oblige an incautious trespasser to
run the gauntlet of batteries of blue and black eyes
on either side of the way. A carriage passing
through it communicated a singular thrill to the
floors, and caused the china on the dining-table to
rattle. Although we were comparatively free from
the prevailing winds, wandering gusts sometimes got
bewildered and strayed unconsciously into our street,
and finding an unencumbered field, incontinently set
up a shriek of joy and went gleefully to work on
the clothes-lines and chimney-pots, and had a good
have a very vivid picture in my memory of an organ-grinder
who was at one time blown into the end of
our street, and actually blown through it in spite of
several ineffectual efforts to come to a stand before
the different dwellings, but who was finally whirled
out of the other extremity, still playing and vainly
endeavoring to pursue his unhallowed calling. But
these were noteworthy exceptions to the calm and
even tenor of our life.
There was contiguity but not much sociability in
our neighborhood. From my bed-room window I
could plainly distinguish the peculiar kind of victuals
spread on my neighbor's dining table; while, on the
other hand, he obtained an equally uninterrupted
view of the mysteries of my toilette. Still that
“low vice, curiosity,” was regulated by certain laws,
and a kind of rude chivalry invested our observations.
A pretty girl, whose bed-room window was
the cynosure of neighboring eyes, was once brought
under the focus of an opera glass in the hands of one
of our ingenious youth; but this act met such
prompt and universal condemnation as an unmanly
advantage, from the lips of married men and bachelors
who didn't own opera glasses, that it was never
repeated.
With this brief sketch I conclude my record of
the neighborhoods I have moved from. I have
moved from many others since then, but they have
generally presented features not dissimilar to the
three I have endeavored to describe in these pages.
of all. Let no inconsiderate reader rashly
move on account of them. My experience has not
been cheaply bought. From the nettle Change I
have tried to pluck the flower Security. Draymen
have grown rich at my expense. House-agents have
known me and were glad, and landlords have risen
up to meet me from afar. The force of habit impels
me still to consult all the bills I see in the streets,
nor can the war telegrams divert my first attention
from the advertising columns of the daily papers. I
repeat, let no man think I have disclosed the weaknesses
of the neighborhood, nor rashly open that
closet which contains the secret skeleton of his dwelling.
My carpets have been altered to fit all sized
odd shaped apartments from parallelopiped to hexagons.
Much of my furniture has been distributed
among my former dwellings. These limbs have
stretched upon uncarpeted floors, or have been let
down suddenly from imperfectly-established bedsteads.
I have dined in the parlor and slept in the
back kitchen. Yet the result of these sacrifices and
trials may be briefly summed up in the statement
that I am now on the eve of removal from my
Present Neighborhood.
MY SUBURBAN RESIDENCE.
I live in the suburbs. My residence, to quote
the pleasing fiction of the advertisement, “is within
fifteen minutes' walk of the City Hall.” Why the
City Hall should be considered as an eligible terminus
of anybody's walk, under any circumstances,
I have not been able to determine. Never having
walked from my residence to that place, I am unable
to verify the assertion, though I may state as a
purely abstract and separate proposition, that it takes
me the better part of an hour to reach Montgomery
street.
My selection of locality was a compromise between
my wife's desire to go into the country, and my own
predilections for civic habitation. Like most compromises,
it ended in retaining the objectionable features
of both propositions—I procured the inconveniences
of the country without losing the discomforts
of the city. I increased my distance from the
butcher and green-grocer, without approximating to
herds and kitchen-gardens. But I anticipate.
Fresh air was to be the principal thing sought for.
into my calculations. The first day I entered my
residence, it blew. The second day was windy.
The third, fresh, with a strong breeze stirring. On
the fourth, it blew; on the fifth, there was a gale,
which has continued to the present writing.
That the air is fresh, the above statement sufficiently
establishes. That it is bracing, I argue from
the fact that I find it impossible to open the shutters
on the windward side of the house. That it is
healthy, I am also convinced, believing that there is
no other force in Nature that could so buffet and ill-use
a person without serious injury to him. Let me
offer an instance. The path to my door crosses a
slight eminence. The unconscious visitor, a little
exhausted by the ascent and the general effects of
the gentle gales which he has faced in approaching
my hospitable mansion, relaxes his efforts, smoothes
his brow, and approaches with a fascinating smile.
Rash and too confident man! The wind delivers a
succession of rapid blows, and he is thrown back.
He staggers up again—in the language of the P. R.,
“smiling and confident.” The wind now makes for
a vulnerable point, and gets his hat in chancery. All
ceremony is now thrown away—the luckless wretch
seizes his hat with both hands, and charges madly
at the front door. Inch by inch, the wind contests
the ground; another struggle, and he stands upon
the verandah. On such occasions I make it a point
to open the door myself, with a calmness and serenity
that shall offer a marked contrast to his feverish,
upon him. If he be inclined to timidity and
bashfulness, during the best of the evening he is all
too-conscious of the disarrangement of his hair and
cravat. If he is less sensitive, the result is often
more distressing. A valued elderly friend once
called upon me after undergoing a two-fold struggle
with the wind and a large Newfoundland dog, (which
I keep for reasons hereinafter stated,) and not only
his hat, but his wig, had suffered. He spent the
evening with me, totally unconscious of the fact that
his hair presented the singular spectacle of having
been parted diagonally from the right temple to the
left ear. When ladies called, my wife preferred to
receive them. They were generally hysterical, and
often in tears. I remember, one Sunday, to have
been startled by what appeared to be the balloon
from Hayes Valley drifting rapidly past my conservatory,
closely followed by the Newfoundland dog.
I rushed to the front door, but was anticipated by
my wife. A strange lady appeared at lunch, but the
phenomenon remained otherwise unaccounted for.
Egress from my residence is much more easy. My
guests seldom “stand upon the order of their going,
but go at once;” the Newfoundland dog playfully harrassing
their rear. I was standing one day, with my
hand on the open hall door, in serious conversation
with the minister of the parish, when the back door
was cautiously opened. The watchful breeze seized
the opportunity, and charged through the defenceless
passage. The front door closed violently in the middle
into the garden. The Newfoundland dog, with
that sagacity for which his race is so distinguished,
at once concluded that a personal collision had taken
place between myself and visitor, and flew to my defence.
The reverend gentleman never called again.
The Newfoundland dog above alluded to was part
of a system of protection which my suburban home
once required. Robberies were frequent in the
neighborhood, and my only fowl fell a victim to the
spoiler's art. One night I awoke, and found a man
in my room. With singular delicacy and respect for
the feelings of others, he had been careful not to
awaken any of the sleepers, and retired upon my rising,
without waiting for any suggestion. Touched
by his delicacy, I forebore giving the alarm until
after he had made good his retreat. I then wanted
to go after a policeman, but my wife remonstrated,
as this would leave the house exposed. Remembering
the gentlemanly conduct of the burglar, I suggested
the plan of following him and requesting him
to give the alarm as he went in town. But this proposition
was received with equal disfavor. The
next day I procured a dog and a revolver. The former
went off—but the latter wouldn't. I then got a
new dog and chained him, and a duelling pistol, with
a hair-trigger. The result was so far satisfactory that
neither could be approached with safety, and for
some time I left them out, indifferently, during the
night. But the chain one day gave way, and the
dog, evidently having no other attachment to the
soon filled by the Newfoundland, whose fidelity and
sagacity I have just recorded.
Space is one of the desirable features of my suburban
residence. I do not know the number of
acres the grounds contain except from the inordinate
quantity of hose required for irrigating. I perform
daily, like some gentle shepherd, upon a quarter-inch
pipe without any visible result, and have had serious
thoughts of contracting with some disbanded fire
company for their hose and equipments. It is quite
a walk to the wood-house. Every day some new
feature of the grounds is discovered. My youngest
boy was one day missing for several hours. His
head—a peculiarly venerable and striking object—
was at last discovered just above the grass, at some
distance from the house. On examination he was
found comfortably seated in a disused drain, in company
with a silver spoon and a dead rat. On being
removed from this locality he howled dismally and
refused to be comforted.
The view from my suburban residence is fine.
Lone Mountain, with its white obelisks, is a suggestive
if not cheering termination of the vista in one
direction, while the old receiving vault of Yerba
Buena Cemetery limits the view in another. Most
of the funerals which take place pass my house. My
children, with the charming imitativeness that belongs
to youth, have caught the spirit of these passing
corteges, and reproduce in the back yard, with
creditable skill, the salient features of the lugubrious
of vitality and expression have been removed, represents
the deceased. Yet unfortunately I have been
obliged to promise them more active participation in
this ceremony at some future time, and I fear that
they look anxiously forward with the glowing
impatience of youth to the speedy removal of
some of my circle of friends. I am told that the
eldest, with the unsophisticated frankness that belongs
to his age, made a personal request to that effect to
one of my acquaintances. One singular result of the
frequency of these funerals is the development of a
critical and fastidious taste in such matters on the
part of myself and family. If I may so express myself,
without irreverence, we seldom turn out for anything
less than six carriages. Any number over this
is usually breathlessly announced by Bridget as,
“Here's another, mum—and a good long one.”
With these slight drawbacks my suburban residence
is charming. To the serious poet, and writer
of elegiac verses, the aspect of Nature, viewed
from my veranda, is suggestive. I myself have
experienced moments when the “sad mechanic exercise”
of verse would have been of infinite relief. The
following stanzas, by a young friend who has been
stopping with me for the benefit of his health, addressed
to a duck that frequented a small pond in the
vicinity of my mansion, may be worthy of perusal,
as showing the debilitated condition of his system.
I think I have met the idea conveyed in the first verse
in some of Hood's prose, but as my friend assures
anything, I conclude I am mistaken:
LINES TO A WATER FOWL.
(Intra Muros.)
Fowl, that sing'st in yonder pool,
Where the summer winds blow cool,
Are there hydropathic cures
For the ills that man endures?
Know'st thou Priessnitz? What? alack!
Hast no other word but “Quack?”
II.
Cleopatra's barge might pale
To the splendors of thy tail,
Or the stately caraval
Of some “high-pooped admiral.”
Never yet left such a wake
E'en the navigator Drake!
III.
Dux thou art, and leader, too,
Heeding not what's “falling due,”
Knowing not of debt or dun—
Thou dost heed no bill but one;
And, though scarce conceivable,
That's a bill Receivable,
Made—that thou thy stars might'st thank—
Payable at the next bank.
ON A VULGAR LITTLE BOY.
The subject of this article is at present leaning
against a tree directly opposite to my window. He
wears his cap with the wrong side before, apparently for
no other object than that which seems the most obvious
—of showing more than the average quantity of very
dirty face. His clothes, which are worn with a certain
buttonless ease and freedom, display, in the different
quality of their fruit-stains, a pleasing indication
of the progress of the seasons. The nose of this
vulgar little boy turns up at the end. I have noticed
this in several other vulgar little boys, although
it is by no means improbable that youthful vulgarity
may be present without this facial peculiarity.
Indeed, I am inclined to the belief that it is rather
the result of early inquisitiveness—of furtive pressures
against window panes, and of looking over fences,
or of the habit of biting large apples hastily—than
an indication of scorn or juvenile superciliousness.
The vulgar little boy is more remarkable for his obtrusive
familiarity. It is my experience of his predisposition
to this quality which has induced me to
write this article.
My acquaintance with him began in a moment of
weakness. I have an unfortunate predilection to cultivate
originality in people, even when accompanied
by objectionable character. But, as I lack the firmness
and skillfulness which usually accompanies this
taste in others, and enables them to drop acquaintances
when troublesome, I have surrounded myself
with divers unprofitable friends, among whom I
count the vulgar little boy. The manner in which
he first attracted my attention was purely accidental.
He was playing in the street, and the driver of a
passing vehicle cut at him, sportively, with his whip.
The vulgar little boy rose to his feet and hurled after
his tormentor a single sentence of invective. I refrain
from repeating it, for I feel that I could not do
justice to it here. If I remember rightly, it conveyed,
in a very few words, a reflection on the legitimacy
of the driver's birth; it hinted a suspicion of his father's
integrity, and impugned the fair fame of his mother;
it suggested incompetency in his present position,
personal uncleanliness, and evinced a skeptical doubt
of his future salvation. As his youthful lips closed
over the last syllable, the eyes of the vulgar little
boy met mine. Something in my look emboldened
him to wink. I did not repel the action nor the
complicity it implied. From that moment I fell into
the power of the vulgar little boy, and he has never
left me since.
He haunts me in the streets and by-ways. He
accosts me, when in the company of friends, with repulsive
freedom. He lingers about the gate of my
Distance he overcomes by main strength of lungs,
and he hails me from the next street. He met me
at the theatre the other evening, and demanded my
check with the air of a young footpad. I foolishly
gave it to him, but re-entering some time after, and
comfortably seating myself in the parquet, I was
electrified by hearing my name called from the gallery
with the addition of a playful adjective. It was
the vulgar little boy. During the performance he
projected spirally-twisted playbills in my direction,
and indulged in a running commentary on the supernumeraries
as they entered.
To-day has evidently been a dull one with him.
I observe he whistles the popular airs of the period
with less shrillness and intensity. Providence, however,
looks not unkindly on him, and delivers into
his hands as it were two nice little boys who have at
this moment innocently strayed into our street.
They are pink and white children, and are dressed
alike, and exhibit a certain air of neatness and refinment
which is alone sufficient to awaken the antagonism
of the vulgar little boy. A sigh of satisfaction
breaks from his breast. What does he do?
Any other boy would content himself with simply
knocking the hats off their respective heads, and so
vent his superfluous vitality in a single act, besides
precipitating the flight of the enemy. But there are
aesthetic considerations not to be overlooked; insult
is to be added to the injury inflicted, and in the
struggles of the victim some justification is to be
boys perceive their danger and draw closer to each
other. The vulgar little boy begins by irony. He
affects to be overpowered by the magnificence of
their costume. He addresses me, (across the street
and through the closed window,) and requests information
if there haply be a circus in the vicinity. He
makes affectionate inquiries after the health of their
parents. He expresses a fear of maternal anxiety in
in regard to their welfare. He offers to conduct
them home. One nice little boy feebly retorts; but
alas! his correct pronunciation, his grammatical exactitude
and his moderate epithets only provoke a
scream of derision from the vulgar little boy, who
now rapidly changes his tactics. Staggering under
the weight of his vituperation, they fall easy victims
to his dexter mawley. A wail of lamentation goes
up from our street. But as the subject of this article
seems to require a more vigorous handling than I
had purposed to give it, I find it necessary to abandon
my present dignified position, seize my hat, open
the front door, and try a stronger method.
WAITING FOR THE SHIP.
A FORT POINT IDYL.
About an hour's ride from the Plaza there is a
high bluff with the ocean breaking uninterruptedly
along its rocky beach. There are several cottages on
the sands, which look as if they had recently been
cast up by a heavy sea. The cultivated patch behind
each tenement is fenced in by bamboos, broken
spars and drift-wood. With its few green cabbages
and turnip-tops, each garden looks something like an
aquarium with the water turned off. In fact you
would not be surprised to meet a merman digging
among the potatoes, or a mermaid milking a sea cow
hard by.
Near this place formerly arose a great semaphoric
telegraph with its gaunt arms tossed up against the
horizon. It has been replaced by an observatory,
connected with an electric nerve to the heart of the
great commercial city. From this point the incoming
ships are signaled, and again checked off at the
the expected steamer, let me tell you a story.
Not long ago, a simple, hard-working mechanic,
had amassed sufficient by diligent labor in the mines
to send home for his wife and two children. He arrived
in San Francisco a month before the time the
ship was due, for he was a western man and had
made the overland journey and knew little of ships
or seas or gales. He procured work in the city, but
as the time approached he would go to the shipping
office regularly every day. The month passed, but
the ship came not; then a month and a week, two
weeks, three weeks, two months, and then a year.
The rough, patient face, with soft lines overlying
its hard features, which had become a daily apparition
at the shipping agent's, then disappeared. It
turned up one afternoon at the observatory as the
setting sun relieved the operator from his duties.
There was something so childlike and simple in the
few questions asked by this stranger, touching his
business, that the operator spent some time to explain.
When the mystery of signals and telegraphs
was unfolded, the stranger had one more question to
ask. “How long might a vessel be absent before
they would give up expecting her?” The operator
couldn't tell; it would depend on circumstances.
Would it be a year? Yes, it might be a year, and
vessels had been given up for lost after two years
and had come home. The stranger put his rough
hand on the operator's, and thanked him for his
“troubil” and went away.
Still the ship came not. Stately clippers swept
into the Gate, and merchantmen went by with colors
flying, and the welcoming gun of the steamer often
reverberated among the hills. Then the patient
face, with the old resigned expression, but a brighter,
wistful look in the eye, was regularly met on the
crowded decks of the steamer as she disembarked her
living freight. He may have had a dimly-defined
hope that the missing ones might yet come this way,
as only another road over that strange unknown expanse.
But he talked with ship captains and sailors,
and even this last hope seemed to fail. When the
careworn face and bright eyes were presented again
at the observatory, the operator, busily engaged,
could not spare time to answer foolish interrogatories,
so he went away. But as night fell, he was seen sitting
on the rocks with his face turned seaward, and
was seated there all that night.
When he became hopelessly insane, for that was
what the physicians said made his eyes so bright,
and wistful, he was cared for by a fellow-craftsman
who had known his troubles. He was allowed to
indulge his fancy of going out to watch for the ship,
in which she “and the children” were, at night
when no one else was watching. He had made up
his mind that the ship would come in at night. This,
and the idea that he would relieve the operator, who
would be tired with watching all day, seemed to
please him. So he went out and relieved the operator
every night!
For two years the ships came and went. He was
on her return. He was known only by a few who
frequented the place. When he was missed at last
from his accustomed spot, a day or two elapsed before
any alarm was felt. One Sunday, a party of
pleasure-seekers clambering over the rocks were attracted
by the barking of a dog that had run on before
them. When they came up they found a plainly
dressed man lying there dead. There were a few
papers in his pocket—chiefly slips cut from different
journals of old marine memoranda—and his face was
turned towards the distant sea.
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