 | Mrs. Skaggs's husbands, and other sketches |  |
URBAN 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 reach the inkstand, always
affects me as a novelty at each recurrence of the
phenomenon. Yet both the venerable head and
bunchy fingers belong 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
required should be brought to him, were seldom
rejected. During this time he had little conversation
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 affected 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,”
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 simulation and deceit; that he is really
older and has 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
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 age is never questioned by the
brute creation. 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
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
steps addressing a group of delighted children out
of 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
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 contengency.
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 sunset and dark, when the shrill scream
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.
street with a lounging step which is quite a relief
to that usual brisk, business-like pace which the
chilly nights impose upon even the most sentimental
lovers. The 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 fulfilment of my prophecy even as it was uttered.
From the window of number Twelve Hundred
and Seven gushes upon the slumberous 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 in the utter vacuity
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 base voice enunciates “Star-r! Star-r!” as a
solitary and independent effort. Sitting here 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 offers 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 prefaced by a remark deprecatory
of the opera, 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 barytone, 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
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 scepticism.
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 windows, and the white skirts
flutter away from 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
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, provençals,
minnesingers, minstrels, and singers of
cansos and love chants! Confusion overtake and
confound 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 maiden 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
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, barring
a looseness of the heel, an ominous yawning at
the side, 't is in good case! Na'theless, 't will
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 wilfully assumed the responsibility of
such a name, I may as well state that I have reason
to infer that Melons was simply the nickname
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 unkempt
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 and hopeful nature. In common with
all such localities, 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 illusion — 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
on the other side. His more peaceful and quieter
amusements 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
youth of his own age sometimes called upon him,
but 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 from 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, untrammelled by the
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 the unhappy
father shook his fist at him. Secure in 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 Melons'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 rewrite it. During
this operation I would turn to consult a book of
reference, which invariably 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
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 forcing 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 was 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 surcease 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 several times up and down the court
with a half-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 trousers,
gazed with some interest at the additional width
they thus acquired. Then he whistled. The singular
conflicting conditions of John Brown's body
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 persecutor of Melons. But I said
nothing.
“Carrots is a bad boy. Killed a policeman onct.
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 reappeared. 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 reappear
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 accounts of him. I have
gone to the Police Office in the vain attempt of
identifying him as a lost child. But I never saw
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 26, 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 have seen
“Chowley” at half past nine, in front of the
butcher's shop round the corner, but as this young
gentleman chose to throw out the gratuitous belief
that the missing child had been converted into
sausages by the butcher, his testimony was received
with some caution by the female portion of
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 Captain 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 of striking fire from any flagstone.
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 generously
assisted the youthful Summerton upon the platform.
From this point a hiatus of several hours'
duration occurs in 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
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 preëmpted, Master Charles
set to work, and for a few moments revelled 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
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 rapidly driven away. The ride which
ensued he 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 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
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 resembled an animal in his Noah's
Ark, hitherto unrecognized and undefined; of the
female equestrians, whose dresses could only be
equalled in magnificence by 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 ferryboats,
and who generally manage to defraud themselves
of those intervals of rest they most require.
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
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
“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 shortened the usual leave-taking,
which, in skilful 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
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 young friend's conversational powers
invariably 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,”
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
or not, suggests a disagreeable self-consciousness.
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
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 revery-babblers? I have
met men who were evidently rolling over, “like a
sweet morsel under the tongue,” some speech they
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
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; if I have ever misinterpreted
the eye-shot which has 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 discomfited, 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 juvenile community,
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 scapegoat. 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 inhuman companions. I remember
once to have been accosted on my own
doorsteps by a couple of precocious youths, who
leading by a rope. The price was extremely moderate,
being, if I remember rightly, but fifty cents.
Imagining the unfortunate animal to 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,
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 experienced in the ways
of his Bohemian friends, he 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 is 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,
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 on the corner. When I read the advertisements
of 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
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 surreptitiously snatches from a stranger's door-step.
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. My
coin was given in recognition of the sentiment;
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
phenomenon 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 alms. 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
on with your mock sentimentalities and simulated
pathos; portray the imaginary sufferings of your
bodiless creations, spread your thin web of philosophy,
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.
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 appeal, so personal in its
artful suggestions, that it would end in the Association
instantly transferring her to my hands.
My next familiar mendicant was a vender 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
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 exciting mental
pabulum being probably ascribed to 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
almshouse 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, forever 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
obliged him to use large quantities of whiskey 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 could n't help suspiciously
feeling might have been a price current,
but which you could see was proffered as an excuse
for alms. Indeed, whenever any stranger handed
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 seem 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
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 which saw in all beggars a possible
prince or fairy, and invested their calling with a
mysterious awe. Perhaps it may be from a belief
that there is something in the old-fashioned almsgivings
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 the annoyance
and trouble of having to weigh the claims of
tickets, which the courtesy of the 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 spectators,
of course feels himself lifted above any feeling
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 vender 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
your relatives and acquaintances from the
trunks on 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. Your friends 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 skilfully projected oranges and apples,
certainly something to interest us in the examination
of that cheerless damp closet, whose painted
wooden walls no furniture or company can make
habitable, wherein our friend is to spend so many
vapid days and restless nights. The sight of these
apartments, yclept state-rooms, — Heaven knows
why, except it be from their want of cosiness, —
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
sea-sickness, 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
weather side with little saline crystals; the villanously
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
annotations; 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
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,
which these associations and some infectious
quality of the atmosphere seem 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 became 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;
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 venders, you wonder
why it is that grief at parting and the unpleasant
novelties of travel are supposed to be assuaged by
oranges 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
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, — in a word —
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 by
became a general lounging-place. A rocking-chair
and crochet basket one day found their way there.
Then the baby invaded its recesses, fortifying himself
behind intrenchments of colored worsteds and
spools of cotton, from which he was only dislodged
captivity. A subtle glamour crept over all who
came within its influence. To apply one's self to
serious work there was an absurdity. An incoming
ship, a gleam on the water, a cloud lingering
about Tamalpais, 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
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 quarrelled 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,
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
our neighborhood. Possessing the lawless freedom
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 did n'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
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 months to move.
And the result whereof I shall 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
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 owner of the property, however,
who seemed to be 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 hollyhocks with which the garden
abounded. The prolific qualities of this plant
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 a 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 show of cheap
blossoms that they were continually shedding, and
one or two dwarf oaks, with scaly leaves and a
generally spiteful exterior, and you have what
was not inaptly termed by our 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
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 washtubs.
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 on
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 the gamins of
the court. He moved away shortly after, 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
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 pretenatural 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 of our
new house, not mentioned in the advertisement,
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 spun of that article. Perhaps
I have somewhat exaggerated these illustrations
of the dapper nicety of our neighborhood, —
a neatness and conciseness which I think have a
general tendency to belittle, dwarf, and contract
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 veranda. 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
scarlet fever, diphtheria, whooping-cough, and measles.
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 gray 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 footfall 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
clothes-lines and chimney-pots, and had a good
time generally until they were quite exhausted. I
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 bedroom 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 toilet.
Still, that “low vice, curiosity,” was regulated by
certain laws, and a kind of rude chivalry invested
our observation. A pretty girl, whose bedroom
window was the cynosure of neighboring eyes,
was once brought under the focus of an opera-glass
in the hands of one of our ingenuous youth; but this
act met such prompt and universal condemnation,
as an unmanly advantage, from the lips of married
men and bachelors who did n't own opera-glasses,
that it was never repeated.
With this brief sketch I conclude my record of
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. I offer them as types containing the salient
peculiarities 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. That there might be too much of this did
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, smooths 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
a point to open the door myself, with a calmness
and serenity that shall offer a marked contrast to
his feverish and excited air, and shall throw suspicion
of inebriety 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 twofold 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
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 of a sentence, precipitating
the reverend gentleman 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 forbore 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
equal disfavor. The next day I procured a dog
and a revolver. The former went off, but the latter
would n'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
house, took the opportunity to leave. His place
was 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
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 procession. A doll, from whose
features all traces 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 one 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
“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. I think I have
met the idea conveyed in the first verse in some
of Hood's prose, but as my friend assures me
that Hood was too conscientious to appropriate
anything not his own, 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!”
Cleopatra's barge might pale
To the splendors of thy tail,
Or the stately caravel
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 mightst 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 skilfulness which usually
accompany this taste in others, and enable 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 sceptical 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 dwelling to waylay me as I issue forth to
business. 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 refinement 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
heads, and so vent his superfluous vitality in a
single act, besides precipitating the flight of the
enemy. But there are æsthetic 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 sought for extreme
measures. The two nice little 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 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 what he would call 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 driftwood. 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 signalled, and again checked off
at the City Exchange. And while we are here
looking for the expected steamer, let me tell you
a story.
Not long ago, a simple, hard-working mechanic
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 could n'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
relieved the operator every night!
For two years the ships came and went. He
was there to see the outward-bound clipper, and
greet her 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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