Читать книгу From Seven to Seventy: Memories of a Painter and a Yankee - Edward Simmons - Страница 5

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Harvard had taught me this—that I did not know a thing—not even the meaning of human life. Somehow I think a college education is of benefit to two classes of people only—those who desire to acquire a social position and those who want to get training in a certain subject. I have not the battle instinct and could never see any use in competition. If I had not come of good people I might have wanted to fight to get with good people, and that is about all college can give. I can remember getting only one real thrill to go out in the world and do something, and that was after a sort of valedictory talk by old Doctor Grey. I had always cared for the out of doors and it appears I stood well in botany. When the venerable professor told us that it takes fifty years to make a nutmeg orchard, and that a million dollars was waiting anyone who would walk into Boston with him the next day and prove to certain capitalists that he could tell the difference between the male and female nutmeg, my commercial instinct was aroused and a gleam of ambition came to me for the first time. I resolved to find out about the male and the female nutmeg.

There was no way to learn anything about beauty in Harvard—no instruction in it and no honors for it. Taking their cue from the Pilgrim Fathers and, since then, the Church, they did not believe in the value of any of the senses of the body, but only in the quality of the human mind and the power to ratiocinate. Any expression or feeling for beauty, except that made by sacred music, was common, vulgar, and to be repressed. If Harvard could manage to produce one Corot, one Beethoven, or one Michael Angelo, her name would be known longer in future ages than it will be for all the small imitation Shakespeares she has sent out over the country. Even Mr. Emerson, in my opinion, was half ashamed of his lyrical gift; and the elder Story, the sculptor, is more honored in Boston for a law book he wrote, before thirty, than for any of his statues.

One day in Mr. Story’s studio, in Europe, was a group of American business men who always made it more or less one of their loafing places. Of course, they had all been well bred enough to wander around and see what the old man had been working at lately, but it was not long before they were settled down over their cigars, discussing the business of stocks and bonds—what they were all thinking about and all they really cared about. Story stood it as long as he could, walking nervously up and down in silence. Finally he whirled, saying:

“Gentlemen, gentlemen, gentlemen, Phidias built the Parthenon. Who in hell were the stockholders?”

After my graduation, it was a question of a career. I had spent four years to find out that I did not know anything, and was to spend three more to find out what I wanted to do. All my ancestors had lived by talk. I had inherited the “gift of gab,” but there seemed to be no market for it in my generation. It had turned from the pulpit to the stage and novels, in order to get an audience. Rhetoric and fiery oratory is not an honest way to teach, as it hypnotizes the listeners. Reading a speech coolly the next morning in the newspaper is the only fair way to judge it. My father felt this and changed his preaching into a dry, matter-of-fact style, not caring to influence by his personality. He immediately lost his audience.

Groping for an occupation, I went to New York and, with a half-formulated idea to become an architect, called on Russel Sturgis. He was a blond-headed young man, about thirty-five, and seemed to me to be quite old and efficient. Looking at me very keenly, he said:

“Do you know anything about the bearing power of bricks?”

“No.”

“Do you care anything?”

“No.”

“Have you any rich relatives to back you?”

“No.”

“You don’t want to be an architect. You want to be a painter.”

This quite astonished me, for I rather thought I did, although I had never formulated the desire in my mind. Besides, to be a painter was not an occupation—but rather on par with a strolling player, a tinker, or a mountebank. Mr. Sturgis told me that my ideas were all wrong and that the painters of the day were real people and, furthermore, making a lot of money. Of course, I could not start in then, but resolved to hold the thought in the back of my mind. In the meantime, my New England coat was feeling so tight as almost to burst the seams if I did not get out of it. I wanted to get away from something. I knew not what. But freedom lay away from home, so, starting out with two hundred and fifty dollars, I went as far as I dared, which was Cincinnati, Ohio.

There was a Boston colony in Cincinnati and I landed among friends, keeping the plunge from being as bad as it might have been. I remember nothing of the trip out except the foundries of Pittsburgh. This wonderful display of great columns of fire, shooting up to the sky, seemed to represent, as I had never seen it before, the Spirit of Flame. Upon arrival, I was seized by Jim Perkins and not allowed to spend a night in a hotel. His brother was married to a relative of close friends of ours on Milton Hill near Boston, and this was enough introduction for him to take me into his home. Afterward, I lived with Chap Dwight, whose mother had been an intimate friend of my father’s, and it was here that I got my first taste of a European influence. He was a wealthy bachelor and lived like one, but had very cosmopolitan ideas of life—a new change for me.

My first job was an agent for an oil firm which had its main office in Pittsburgh. It may have been the only one I could get, but I rather imagine that my droolings and dreamings over the wondrous flames of the foundries of Pittsburgh invested the work (in my mind) with romance and took away (in the minds of my relatives) the sting of my having to be called a salesman. The first month I made one sale. Overjoyed at getting an order for a thousand barrels of oil, I signed a contract to deliver them at a certain time f. o. b.—Cincinnati. Harvard College had taught me many things, but had neglected to give me any idea whatever of those letters, “f. o. b.” My salary was fifty dollars a month, the freight was sixty, so I quit at the end of the month, owing my boss ten dollars.

I considered the matter closed and that I had learned a good lesson; but, unfortunately, I had had a large amount of business stationery printed. Thinking my young cousins could use it to draw on and desiring never to see it again, I sent it home. But I had reckoned without my dear mother’s sense of economy. For years I was forced to receive letters from her with

EDWARD SIMMONS

Agent —— Oil Co.

at the head of the page.

After this not very profitable occupation I turned my attention to tutoring, fitting a boy for West Point, and another for the Yale Scientific School. The former was the son of an ignorant Irishman and had got a limited amount of information at the Jesuit school. I taught him geography, history of the country and states, of which he knew nothing, and I made him learn the Declaration of Independence and simple mathematics. He went in with flying colors.

I found that my business career did not interfere in any way with my social life in Cincinnati. I was still anxious to be an artist and was painting in my bedroom every night. The city was, even at that time, beginning to be an art center for the Middle West. Nicholas Longworth, grandfather of the husband of Miss Alice Roosevelt, had shown a particular aptitude for making money and a better one for spending it the right way. As a young man he had climbed the hills of the town and, looking from them across the water, decided it would be impossible for the city to extend in but one way. Accordingly, he put his savings into land, always keeping one lap ahead of the spread of population. Caring for beautiful things, he began to encourage the fine arts, and it was at his home that I saw my very first collection of oil paintings. Concord was the home of the steel engraving, and the copies of oils that my father had brought back with him from Europe and hung up in the Old Manse swore at everything else in the house. The Longworth collection was mostly German pictures—by Koeck-Koeck, Meyer von Bremen, and two by Lessing of the life of Huss, the martyr, which were evidently worthless, but so aroused my decorative instinct that I remembered them for years after.

Wandering up the main street of Cincinnati one evening, I saw a name plate on a doorway—one I had never heard—and after it the magic word “Artist.” I was thrilled. There was actually some one in this town living and having his being and spending his time painting. I used to pass back and forth before this sign, which was at the bottom of a stairway, like a dentist’s or a photographer’s; and finally, one evening just at dusk, I got the courage to go up. Knocking timidly on the door, I was greeted with loud roars of “Come in.” The dingy room was a holy of holies to me—I had never seen an artist’s studio before. In the far corner was a man in a khaki apron, using the blackest of soft soap to wash what were, in my eyes, enormous brushes. Heretofore, my own experiments in oil painting had been made with the usual small brushes and a tin box used by maiden ladies. The bigness and boldness of this establishment took my breath away.

When I got the courage to look about I saw that, besides this big Norse viking with the tumbled hair, there was a sculptor in the corner, modeling—think of the daring!—a figure in the nude! I must have presented a ridiculous figure, for there was a laugh behind my back, and, turning, I saw a woman almost naked, sitting on a stool! They asked me why I had wanted to come in, and I told them I tried to paint, but that I had never seen a studio before. I looked with wonder at the big canvases on the wall, and even then realized that here was a sense of color altogether different from that of the German artists, and that the capacity for brushwork was a marvel—for this painter was none other than Frank Duveneck, who had just returned from Munich.

When I went up to West Walnut Hills and told them that I had found a real artist in Cincinnati, I was laughed at in a very pitying way; but later on, when this same Duveneck gave a showing of his work in Boston and was hailed as the “new American Velásquez,” I felt a great satisfaction, although I was no longer in Cincinnati and could not enjoy my triumph.

After an experience as a casket maker’s assistant, where I was expected to board with him and sleep in the manufactory, and eventually—great stress was laid on this—become a partner in the business, I decided to accept an offer my cousins had made me to go farther west and become a clerk in a department store they had started in San Francisco. I had previously received a proposition to become a salesman of cheap jewelry, for, so this man told me, my line of talk would be a sure-fire success for making sales to “servant girls at the back door.”

My ticket as far as Chicago was given me by Chap Dwight, who was connected with railways, and for the rest of the way I paid for a first-class fare and no Pullman—in those days it was possible to sit up in the smoker. This I did as far as Cheyenne, where my troubles began. I was told that the train would stop for an hour, so I alighted to take a look about the town and get some dinner. The only thing that aroused my interest was a sign marked “Simmons” over a doorway with steps leading down to it and quite evidently a dive. There were two baize doors above which shone bright lights, with reams of smoke rising above the heads of men. I went down and started to push open the door, but just at that moment loud voices were raised inside and something whizzed by my head. I looked up, and, not six inches from my outstretched hand was a clean bullethole through the door. I never opened it.

Trying not to hurry, I made my way back to my train and started to get aboard, searching in every pocket for my ticket. It was gone. I begged clemency from the conductor and tried to make him remember that I had got on at Chicago, but I had no berth, and there were too many deadbeats trying to get to California in those days for him to have any pity whatsoever for me. In desperation, I spoke to the baggageman. He advised me to go as far as my money would take me and then telegraph home for more. Anything was better than being left at midnight in this city of careless bullets. Out to Rawlins, Wyoming, was as far as my pocketbook would take me, and I would have two dollars and fifty cents left for a bed and telegram.

Imagine a town eight thousand feet above the sea, freezing cold, again the middle of the night. How I got off the train and over to the hotel, where shown the only light, I do not know. I do know, however, that I put a chair under the handle of the door, candle and matches and my pistol beside the bed, before I went to sleep. Daylight showed no improvement, but only took away the air of dark mystery and bared to the eye a bleakness indescribable. To have been told that there was no telegraph office would not have surprised me a bit, but to learn that it was “not a money order station” was almost worse. Sitting on a stone in front of the hotel, I tried to think out my problem. The temperature was twenty or thirty below zero, nothing grew in the ground, and all the ice and snow was blown away by the terrible winds as soon as it fell. That morning two men had been found frozen stiff within a hundred yards of the hotel. They had not seen the light, which was on the other side of the house, and had simply lain down and decided to stop. To see the dead bodies of these men who had given in a hundred yards from safety was one of the greatest lessons I ever learned—NEVER STOP!

I soon became acquainted with the population, which consisted of mine host and his Chinese cook, the storekeeper and sheriff, two hundred men in the roundhouse, and two women who earned their living in a questionable manner at night and spent the daylight hours sewing and mending for the workmen. Although these women were undoubtedly under thirty, they looked aged and worn, and their hands were calloused from the needle. Every vestige of attraction had departed long ago, and I wondered how they could be so kindly and cheerful amid such surroundings of hopelessness.

At last I formulated a plan and, going to the storekeeper, who was sure to have cash on hand, I asked him if he ever lent money and at what per cent? He said, “yes,” but what security could I give? Two or three hundred tramps passed through the town every day, and my word that it would be sent to him was no good whatever. Again I went out to my stone.

A Yankee is seldom in so tight a place that he can’t wiggle out, and I knew if I could only think hard enough I could solve the problem. Going back, I said to my friend, the storekeeper:

“If you knew that there was a sum of money deposited in your name in a certain bank in Cincinnati, would you give it to me?”

He answered, “Yes.”

I telegraphed to my friend Harrison, who must have sensed that I would have trouble on the way and had told me to be sure to call on him for anything whatever.

“Place one hundred dollars to the credit of Sam Atkins in the First National Bank of Cincinnati.”

He understood, for after a cashier’s confirmation for the careful Mr. Atkins, I received my hundred, less five per cent, and was on my way again.

We were in the real West now. All along, beside the tracks, were huts built of piled-up abandoned railway ties. Here men had tried to spend the night crawling in over a fire, many having been burned to death this way. It was surely an example of the survival of the fittest. Constantly, from the car window, could be seen the former emigrant wagon trail, and everywhere were the bleached bones of bison and oxen. Every time a hill rose high enough to count, there was a little white cross, marking the graves of a baby or perhaps a wife whose ashes were scattered, like those of the engine, God knows where. No calvary could have shown more evidences of pain and suffering than the trail of these first argonauts across the plains.

A fat man on the train took an interest in me, and it flattered me greatly. I have since met his type all over the world: he is what is called in gambling parlance, a “capper.” I was dressed well and he probably thought I was wealthy, for he turned and asked me if I did not want to get off with him in Green River and go to a place where we could get beer and free lunch (then unknown to me) for one “bit.” This idea pleased me, as the meals at the stations, which included bear meat and all sort of luxuries, were one dollar. The town was nothing but sagebrush and hills, with one little straight street down to a dive.

While we were eating and drinking, in came a man whose type I had been warned against in Cincinnati, where all the talk was of the West. He was a handsome, sharp, keen, inbred Yankee with a fur coat down to his heels, and kept swinging a bunch of mink skins while simulating drunkenness. I should have known that he was the three-card-monte man, as he fitted perfectly the description that had been given to me; but he was such an artist that, in my youthful ignorance, he convinced me that he was the real drunk that the three-card-monte man imitated. Swaggering around the room, he fished in his pocket for some money and, pulling out a roll of bills, threw it on the floor in disgust. Taking out a lot of gold, he indicated that it was the only money he cared to use.

“I’ve been in the land of Mormons,” he cried, producing a pack of cards, “and I learned a new game which I’ll show you. It’s called ‘Find the Mormon.’”

All the men, including a crowd of my acquaintances from the train, who had come in, crowded around him, myself in the front row. My friend, the capper, tried his hand and won several times, making a great haul. Then he urged me to bet and, upon my telling him I was broke, thrust a twenty-dollar bill into my hand. I bet it and won, paying back my debt, and then held out the other bill to the bartender to change so I could divide with my “pal.” He reached his head down below the bar and I suddenly felt the atmosphere change....

I turned to my friend. He was gently fingering a gun. With a cold, steely eye, the three-card-monte man stood, a pistol in his hand, with one end lying on the bar, casually pointing my way. In front of me the “barkeep” had risen with another. I looked behind for help, and all the men from the train had silently melted away. Leaving the twenty on the bar, I turned and walked slowly out of the place, not daring to increase my pace by one second until I reached the train.

I told my story to the conductor, and he said if I had carried off any winnings these men would have followed me to the ends of the earth and taken it from me. If I had been killed, they would have hitched my body to a horse and dragged it out into the sagebrush, leaving the coyotes to do the rest.

As an unpleasant sequel to this, I read in one of the first papers I picked up in San Francisco an account of two brothers from Vermont who got in with the same men. The first lost all of his money and borrowed all of his brother’s, finally getting into a row with the gamblers, and was shot dead. The other brother escaped and somehow got to the train, going on to Salt Lake City, where he telegraphed home for more money. Watching his time, he went back to the saloon, shot the “barkeep” and capper dead, and left the three-card-monte man dying on the floor.

I carried a pistol on this trip, but up to this time I had had no chance to use it. However, since I had looked down the barrels of several myself, I was beginning to feel very brave. That romantic idea of “avenging one’s honor or that of one’s women” had quite got into my blood. The train broke down at Winnemucca, in a country covered with six feet of snow. A crowd of us had been having a good time amid much good-natured talking and chaffing, when I saw one of the trainmen, evidently drunk, sitting beside a woman passenger, with his arms about her, kissing her violently. Her husband was standing beside the seat, protesting, with no effect. Instantly I was at the head of a crowd that took the offender by the neck and threw him off the train. Without my counting the cost, I became the hero of the hour. But all was not finished. Our intoxicated friend came around under the window and raged threateningly until there was nothing for me to do but go out to meet him. Drawing my pistol, I strode on to the platform. The minute he saw me his hand went to his pocket and drew out his gun, but I had him covered.

It was just a question of who dared to shoot first. My blood ran cold; but just at that moment four hands came round the corner of the car, two had him by the back of the neck and two had taken his gun away. Then slowly but surely he was withdrawn from view. The conductor asked me not to report the occurrence, as the man was a fireman, a family man, and all right when sober. I was so glad to get away with my life that I would never have told a soul. Furthermore, I sold my pistol as soon as I reached San Francisco, and have never carried another.

The rarest sight I ever saw was the sudden change from six feet of snow to the southern slope of the Sierras. With a plunge from winter into summer, the whole character of the landscape changed. The air was balmy, the sky was a soft blue, and looking like orchards of apple trees of enormous size were the live oaks that covered the slopes of those mighty mountain sides. But best of all, beside the tracks, and almost denying the month of February, was growing tender young green grass! I picked some of it, put it in my buttonhole, and cried. I had fallen in love with California.

After that every shanty station saw me out of the car, smelling the atmosphere and feasting my eyes on the beauty of this big, good-natured, sweet, mild country. At one of these mountain stops, feeling hungry, I bought a large slab of custard pie. Beside the tracks was a cage on wheels in which lay a big female grizzly whose owner was taking her to San Francisco to be sold. The man was nothing loath to explain his prowess in capturing such a fearsome beast, and we all crowded about, myself, of course, in the front row. Looking at us while talking and gesticulating, his hand went fairly well within the bars, whereupon the lazy grizzly, seemingly dozing, closed her mouth over his fingers and backed slowly to the rear of the cage, pulling his arm in with her. With that he whirled, fed his arm in between the bars and, quickly looking around, grabbed my pie and slapped the bear in the face with it. Of course it splashed, and she immediately let go of him to lick her chops, but his hand came out with the mark of every tooth upon its back. In spite of its lack of humor, I truly believe that this is the original custard-pie story.

San Francisco was a very different city in those days from what it is to-day; the sea came almost up to Montgomery Street, and beyond Van Ness Avenue there was nothing but sand dunes shifting and changing every minute. This is practically all new now, as the great fire of 1906 swept it away. I remember the Bay and the ferryboat, the long pier at the Oakland Mole and passing the romantic and lonely Goat Island. The water seemed strangely quiet and strangely blue to me, whose only experience of the sea was the coast of Maine.

The Chinese and Mexican quarters of the city were a marvel, for both of these peoples had managed to take bits of their own countries in their entirety and transplant them on this sandy soil. San Francisco is unique (as American cities go) in being able to keep within her bosom the civilizations of foreign peoples, in their original state, long enough for them to fertilize and bring forth the best of themselves. Visitors to her shore do not immediately change their manners and customs to agree with hers—perhaps for the very good reason that she hasn’t any to agree with—but if it were no uncommon sight to see a Mexican sombrero, it was no less a common one to see a Chinese woman in native costume, feet bound, in high-stilted slippers, looking for all the world as if she had stepped down from an ancient vase, and propelled up Market Street by her big-footed “amah.”

This thoroughfare seemed to fade away at the old city hall, which was then only in the process of construction. In fact, the only landmark which appears to have survived conflagrations and the march of progress is the Cliff House. Although it has burned down several times, each new building immediately takes on the air of the old, and whether, by the intention of its builders or the architectural limitations of the rock upon which it is built, it looks the same to-day as it did when I first saw it in ’75. However one may deplore the mushroom existence of his familiar landmarks downtown, one has only to take a trip—now shorter many minutes by the change from horse to gasoline—out to the Pacific Ocean and, from a little table, sheltered by glass from the might of the winds, look out upon the same horizon, the same calm blue of the waters, and, best of all, the same Seal Rocks with their brown-coated inhabitants (grown woefully smaller in numbers now), sunning themselves and teaching their young that protection lies in remaining near at home.

The most characteristically Western survival of the “days of forty-nine” were the San Francisco bars—not speaking of the smartest ones, for those I seldom invaded. There was nothing less than ten cents in the town; nickels they gave away and pennies were thrown down the gutter. Everything was sold in terms of “bits.” Of course, there were two- and four-bit coins, but a one was the survival of the mixture of currency that had gotten into the land. Mexican, Canadian, French, etc., small silver coins were all bunched together as “bits,” and eight were called a dollar, making one the value of twelve and one-half cents. A drink theoretically cost a “bit,” but if you gave a quarter in payment, you received ten cents change. They were bound to take ten cents if you offered it, but too many deals of this kind in the same place elicited some such muttered remark as, “Tight Easterner,” or, “Why don’t you take some of the furniture along with you when you go?” The free lunch, which was really free, was served by gorgeous big men in clean white aprons, and for the price of one drink, you could have such a repast as boiled mutton and caper sauce, salmon and cream gravy with mashed potatoes, all sorts of biscuits, apple pie, fruit, and coffee. Should you dare offer a tip to this husky waiter (or, indeed, to anyone in all California at that time), you ran the risk of a strong right arm or, worse still, a tongue-lashing such as you had never heard in the effete East.

The price of a newspaper was also vague, but you were on the safe side if you offered Willie no less than a dime; for silver and gold were the only metals this child cared for. Coppers and nickels he threw into the gutter and made you a present of the paper, remarking that if you were so poor as that he would give you one. Willie was a character. We never knew where he came from or where he lived, but he had a face like one of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s angels and must have been the model who sat to the Lord for the type of “Mother’s Darling.” He was under ten years old, slight and rather tall, with great blue eyes and curly yellow hair. His occupations were selling matches by day and newspapers by night, and when business was slack he amused himself by calling ribald verses—parodies on such popular songs as “Pop Goes the Weasel”—at the bankers who passed by without buying. He stammered badly, adding much to the effectiveness of some of the lines. His passion was gambling, and his first utterance on meeting an acquaintance was, “M-m-m-m-match you for a dime?”

One day one of the clerks, a Southerner, and myself put up a job on Willie and offered to show him “three-hand matching.” Each choosing a different side of the coin, we won all of his cash in about ten minutes. Still in the game, he bet his matches, and, of course, we skinned him again. His lip began to tremble, but he pulled himself together and, saying, “B-b-b-busted, by God,” stalked out of the place as pretty a gentleman as ever there was. We called him back to get his matches, and tried to explain. At first he was furious at our daring to think he was no sport, but finally he saw the joke and a light came into his eyes.

That was at noon; at six o’clock, passing the Chronicle building, I saw what appeared to be a pile of boys, all absolutely absorbed in something going on in their midst. In the center was Willie, beside him a pal, and between them one of those formless caps that boys affect, entirely full of dimes and quarters. He looked up and saw me; not a muscle moved in his face, but after a second, his left eye slowly closed as if in sleep.

In spite of its being wide open, San Francisco was then one of the cleanest towns I have ever known. The French spirit had invaded it, and here again the Western civilization had taken the best from these foreigners—in this case, their cooking. The Poodle Dog and Marchand’s were already flourishing with their Cabinets Particuliers and for the first time in my life I saw wine drunk everywhere. The prostitutes were kept to themselves in one section of the city, and any woman who stayed out on the streets alone at night dared not stop and look in a shop window or loiter on a corner, as she would be taken by the arm by a large policeman and sent to Dupont Street.

This street led up the hill to Chinatown, and all along its sides were rows of one-story buildings, divided into small cubicles, each with one window and a swinging door that led directly in from the sidewalk. Everyone walked here, and it was the thoroughfare for one of the most fashionable churches, even though, sitting at the windows or leaning on the swing gates, were women of all nationalities, addressing the passers-by in the language of their country.

Everywhere were the earmarks of a populace plunged suddenly from hard work and poverty into riches greater than they could conceive of, and with no time to make the necessary adjustments. There were some attempts at making social distinctions, but it was difficult under the circumstances. Mrs. So-and-so, who lived on Nob Hill, was probably only one generation removed from the washtubs of Cripple Creek, while I, a poor assistant salesman in a department store, was a graduate of Harvard College. The father of one young woman upon whom I used to call had been so busy counting his recent millions that he had not had time to build himself one of those mansions with a drawing-room, but still stuck to a “parlor,” and used to retire gracefully to the kitchen and allow his daughter to entertain me, uninterrupted, in the front room of the house. In fact, he never made his appearance, and I saw the mother only once, both evidently departing to the nether regions at the first ring of the doorbell. Such a situation would never have been allowed in New England unless the young couple were engaged, but out West the second generation held full sway.

One home, now devoted, I think, to an art institute, had, in the front hallway, a terra-cotta dado with Greek heads running around it; and, lest there should be no mistake, the name of each hero was painted below. But the artist was no Greek scholar. Many words were misspelled, and in several cases (worse still) the feminine article η was placed, instead of ο, before a masculine name. What cared the lady of the house for a small thing like that, when she could take me up in an elevator (almost an unknown thing at that time) and show me, stowed away in her attic, fifteen bales of Oriental rugs? And I had tried to sell her one!

Quite in contrast with this residence was that of David Colton—pure white marble of Greek architecture, with a beautiful lawn sloping down to a hedge of enormous calla lilies. Some months after leaving San Francisco, I heard of Mr. Colton away up in the Shasta Mountains. I was working out my poll tax by mending roads, when an Irishman, working with me for the same reason, stopped and, leaning on his shovel, asked me if I knew any of “the bloods” in San Francisco. Dave Colton had started when he did and far outstripped him, but had never ceased to be his friend.

The Haggins’ was another of these homes where one felt the evidences of good taste and refinement. I shall never forget one party I attended there. One of the family had been to our store in the afternoon and purchased some merchandise, placing special stress on the necessity of having it delivered that day, as it was needed for the reception in the evening—the same to which I had been invited. In the rush of closing the store, it was noticed that these things had been overlooked, and, as the Haggin house was on my way home, I agreed to deliver them myself. Accordingly, I proceeded to the back door and handed these sundry brooms and saucepans to the butler, who received them from me in shirt sleeves as man to man. Later in the evening, with a friend from Harvard whom the young ladies especially desired to meet, I alighted at the house from a carriage, this time at the front door. The butler, who was English, received me with a suspicious air, but let me get into the drawing-room, when all of a sudden, with the light of memory in his eye, he made rather a threatening movement toward me, but, thinking better of it, made his way up to Mr. Haggin and, drawing him aside, whispered excitedly in his ear. That gentleman burst out into loud guffaws of laughter and could not refrain from telling the joke. The butler had whispered the awful news that I was a tradesman!

No Britisher, even a servant, could possibly be expected to understand the Californian of that day. The bigness was not confined to the natural characteristics of the country, but seemed to have invaded the spirit of the people, making them pleasure-loving and easy-going, and, above all, gave them a magnificent, even if childlike, sense of humor. Then the richness of the land and the abundance of everything made them careless of property. Imagine a city where every humble clerk owned a horse and carriage; imagine, if you can, that same horse and carriage to be absolutely at the disposal of anyone—a friend or stranger—so that if you came out of a building onto the sidewalk, and your own vehicle had disappeared, you simply hopped into the nearest one and proceeded to your destination. Think of the president of the Stock Exchange being driven out of his seat by beanshooters operated by the members! Business was slack that day, and this was merely a form of amusement. Bring them any sort of a new toy, and they were ready to play with it immediately. We had an oversupply of ice cream freezers at the store, so I made up my mind to get rid of them. Every day at a certain hour I gave a demonstration out on the sidewalk, lecturing all the time I was freezing the cream, and handing out free samples of the stuff to the assembled crowd. These same members of the Stock Exchange thought it a great joke to join the antics and chaff me, while trying to force me to accept five-dollar gold pieces for the ice cream. Of course they bought out the entire stock of freezers; Californians are always eager to pay for their fun.

Every once in a while there were earthquakes. The small ones were ignored, but the large ones would send everyone tumbling out of the buildings onto the sidewalks. It was excitement, and we lived on it. During the Sunday sermon in one of the churches the building began to shake, and it is told that the clergyman rose and said:

“Remember that you are in the hands of God here in church as well as outside....”

At that a piece of plaster fell on the pulpit and he finished:

“But the vestry is good enough for me!”

It was through the store that I met Laura Fair. Hers was a tragic life. One of those women born to be a companion to men—she was not strong enough (or was it hard enough) to withstand the buffeting of manmade laws. Up in Virginia City, where she lived when young, it was said that “the front of her house always looked like a country funeral,” so many one-man teams. It was here during the Civil War that she got into her first trouble. Wrapping herself in the Stars and Bars, she paraded the streets, daring anyone to stop her; and over her house, which was the resort of the leading Secessionists, she flew the Confederate flag, saying she would kill anyone who attempted to lower it. One day a Union man pulled it down and she shot him dead.

A. P. Crittenden, a lawyer from South Carolina, then championed Mrs. Fair’s cause, and she was acquitted, due to his passionate and eloquent appeal at the trial. A close relationship between the two ensued and they moved to San Francisco, where she was known as the attorney’s common-law wife. After some years, Crittenden decided to send East for his legal wife and family. Laura Fair told him directly that she would kill him if he did. Walking up to the family group as they stood on the Oakland ferryboat, she quickly drew a revolver from beneath her cloak and shot him, saying:

“You have ruined the reputation of myself and daughter.”

The state of California has never executed a woman, and, while Mrs. Fair was sentenced to be hanged at her first trial, at her second one she was set free. During the ’seventies, she was living quietly, and I had only vaguely heard her mentioned, when one morning my boss came to the back of the store, saying:

“You must go out in front and wait on Laura Fair.”

I went out to serve this person, who looked more like an elderly aunt than a murderess, and I marveled that any man would be afraid of so mild a creature. She seemed to have no charm whatever.

The bill for her purchases amounted to about eight dollars, and shortly after, just as a joke, I was sent to her house to collect it. The same thin, sallow, worn-looking woman greeted me at the door. She showed, contrary to my expectations, not the slightest touch of impropriety or dissipation, but—wonder of wonders—when this woman spoke, the sound was liquid music, and the words were followed by a smile so dazzling that one could not help imagining a withered bud suddenly opening into a beautiful flower. She called me Mr. Bill Collector and bade me sit down and have a glass of sherry; then she questioned me about my life.

I have been told she lived on, neglected by her daughter, and once attempting suicide, to a drab and commonplace old age; but I prefer to think of her as she was that day, calm and beautiful by some expression within, sitting in the quiet of her drawing-rooms, and showing the most enthusiastic interest in the absurd aspirations of a callow youth. Laura Fair was one of the few superwomen I have ever met.

My clerk’s salary was augmented in small ways, and one of the most pleasant was taking the place of the literary and dramatic critic of the Chronicle while he went away for a two months’ vacation. After the performances I used to sneak up to a saloon near the City Hall where Market Street tailed off into nothing, and write my criticisms of the plays over a glass of beer. I remember my chagrin when some of the members of Mrs. Oates’s Opera Bouffe Company hunted out my lair and burst in upon me almost nightly. It was my good fortune to hold down my job at the time of the opening of the Baldwin Theater, and also my good fortune to have saved that structure from burning on the day before its opening. Strange to say, not in my capacity of critic, but that of clerk in the store, I went back of the stage of the new theater to deliver some packages, when I saw a naked gas jet, which was jammed against the wall, with a flame ten feet long running up against unplaned boards. I yelled for the stage hands and ran for a bucket of water. In ten minutes it would have been a roaring holocaust and certain to have destroyed—not only the theater, but the hotel above.

The opening of this playhouse (named for Lucky Baldwin) was quite a social event, and everyone of importance was there. I was very anxious to show some attention to a certain young lady whom I admired greatly, so I decided to send her some flowers to wear on this night. My eyes lit on lilies of the valley growing in pots which were quite common and inexpensive in the East, and seemed unpretentious enough for the pocketbook of a poor department-store clerk. The florist assured me they would be twenty-five cents apiece; so, with my usual haste, I purchased a dozen pots, picking off the blooms myself in the shop (wondering at the sudden obsequiousness of the man who waited upon me) and ordering them delivered to the young lady’s home. It was a beautiful present and a much-envied one, but a good lesson to me. The lily of the valley is about the only flower that does not grow prolifically in California. Instead of being twenty-five cents a pot, they were twenty-five cents a bloom, and my rashness cost exactly forty-five dollars. Determined to get my money’s worth, I carried the despoiled plants out to my cousin; but even here I was doomed to disappointment, for she informed me that the lily of the valley was a biennial and the plants would not bloom again for two years.

Speaking of theaters, an amusing story is told of the earlier days in San Francisco when there was a semaphore on Telegraph Hill which signaled the approach of the weekly or monthly steamer. It was the habit of the citizens to drop whatever they were doing and run down to the wharf to meet the incoming vessel. One night there was a performance at a theater, and the heroine of the play was required to rush in crying:

“My God! What does this mean?”

This particular lady had gestures all her own and accompanied these words by waving her arms up and down like the handles of two pumps, and looking, at least to one member of the audience, like a human semaphore, for a voice from the gallery shouted:

“Steamer in sight!”

With that, every person in the theater grabbed his hat and coat and ran swiftly onto the street and down to the steamer dock, leaving a much-astonished actress on the stage.

My job as a critic had brought me in touch with the literary and stage folk, but I was eager to meet the painters. Alas! they were woefully few. Perhaps nature, in this part of the land, was too overwhelming; but I think it was because new countries seldom produce artists. However, besides Hill, there was almost no one but William Keith putting upon canvas the beauty of the California landscape. He was much more the traditional painter person than Frank Duveneck, and, although he really had money, he preferred to give the impression of the wild-eyed genius starving and striving to get along. I was still using my rattly old tin box, and it fascinated me to steal into his studio and watch this tousle-headed, pallid man put enormous quantities of paint upon large canvases in the most extravagant manner.

An artist who expected to live by his painting had a hard row to hoe. These rich miners cared not a whit for art, and any pictures they bought were purchased through Eastern or foreign dealers who took occasion to get rid of a great number of spurious “old masters” on the unsuspecting Californian. Most of the fortunes had been made quite unawares by illiterate and uncultivated men whose taste was vulgar to the extreme. These were the days of terrific financial excitement of the silver mines of Nevada, of the almost overnight millionaires such as Flood, Mackay, O’Brien, and Fair. The Comstock Lode, purchased at about two dollars a share from the poor prospector who discovered the vein, was selling, when I was out West, at something like $3500 for one-fourth of a share and paying a twenty-five per cent dividend quarterly. Is it any wonder they sometimes lost their heads?

Speculation ran riot, and the gambling instinct (which is almost a disease in California) had a chance to spread itself over an entire population who would almost sell their souls to bet upon what the deep, dark earth would yield on the morrow. In my small way I was affected; but I can remember being in only one real deal. My cousin ran into the store out of breath one day, saying:

“Have you any money? Don’t ask me why, but give it to me.”

I had diligently saved about sixteen dollars, and it amused me to try the gamble.

In a few days he returned and spilled two or three hundred dollars in gold on the counter. My winnings! As secretary to Adolph Sutro he had got a tip before the Stock Exchange heard of it. This sort of thing was happening every few days.

Adolph Sutro was one of the few educated men of the time. He was a black-bearded, serious, learned Jew, and more of an artist in his line than the others. He carried out many plans for beautifying San Francisco, built the Sutro Gardens and the large baths out by the ocean, and tried to encourage an interest in the fine arts by sending students abroad to study. I have sat many a time in his downtown office and heard him talk about his plans for the Sutro Tunnel. He had seen the suffering of the men in the mines on account of heat and bad air, and the troubles that occurred from the water that had to be constantly pumped out. So he worked out a theory for the construction of a tunnel into the Comstock and other mines, which would begin at a low level and run deep into the mountain, meeting the mines, draining them, and forming a passage through which the ore could be brought out. After encountering many difficulties in financing his project, he obtained his capital from the East and even from Europe, but the hardships had just begun. The first attempts were failures from an engineering point of view, but the final result was of inestimable benefit to the country. Mr. Sutro helped personally with the work, and could be seen with coat off at the head of a gang of laborers, helping with his bare hands to make his dream come true.

Hospitality stretched to its utmost limits in California during the ’seventies. Anything the state produced belonged to the meanest of God’s creatures. I remember being invited to visit at a country place and, walking over the estate, hesitated to pick any of the fruit. I was laughed at.

“The fruit grows on the trees for any man to pick,” said my host.

It was literally true: but the memory of being whipped, in Concord days, for climbing a wall and picking a pear, was too recent for me to understand this point of view.

One of the most lavish entertainers, and a man to whom the city of San Francisco owes a great debt, was William Ralston. He started numberless civic enterprises, one of which was a hotel which was to make her famous the world over; and he imbued that hotel with a spirit, a hospitality, and an atmosphere which have endured to the present time. Into every detail of this hostelry he put the most loving care. After the fire of 1906, which completely demolished the inside, the walls remained as stanch and firm as they ever were and completely earthquake proof—due to their enormous thickness.

The rooms were built around a central court, very much like a patio. Horses and carriages drove right in here, depositing guests almost at the office desk. The furniture for all the rooms was made of solid mahogany which Mr. Ralston brought all the way from South America in a big white fleet sent down for the purpose. Nothing more completely Western or completely comfortable could be imagined. If you stopped at the Palace Hotel, you were certain to get the feeling that you were somebody’s personal guest and that that somebody had taken a great deal of trouble for your ease and enjoyment.

In his own home at Belmont, Mr. Ralston was an extravagant host. The immense house was always crowded with guests, and from a specially constructed gallery he looked down (like an Emperor of Rome) upon these numbers of people, each one amusing himself according to his own personal desire. But emperors fall, and there are always people jealous of a dictator, no matter how just he may be. Ralston lived for others and consequently trusted others; therefore, the blow must have been harder to bear when it fell.

I saw him the day he was asked to resign from the presidency of the California Bank. It was right after he had left the board of directors. He did not act in any way unusual, but came out of the building, went straight to his carriage, and drove away. That was in the morning. The evening papers had the account of his suicide. He had gone out to North Beach to have his daily swim, and, contrary to his usual habit, left his watch and valuables in the life saver’s hands, waded into the water, and was gone.

One could hardly pass over the dreamers of the West without telling of the greatest of them all—the Emperor Norton. His was a vision worth having, for he believed himself the deposed ruler of the vast kingdom of the United States. Foully ousted from his throne, he was only biding the time when he would come into what was rightfully his. I suppose “the few faithful subjects,” who stuck to him were the citizens of San Francisco. At any rate, they furnished him with a living and the few luxuries he deemed necessary in his exile. They called him a “natural,” but I often suspected him of being more clever than they knew.

The Emperor looked very much like General Grant, perhaps because of his bushy beard and long blue army coat. In his top hat he wore a feather and elaborate gold epaulets on his shoulders, while across his breast were rows and rows of medals. He was in no way shabby, and, in spite of his costume, gave the impression of mighty dignity. No one laughed at him, no one interfered with him, and he went his way, receiving everything he wanted without paying a cent. Charity? Not at all. He took it as his right. The street cars belonged to him; therefore, he rode for nothing.

He always looked neat, with his boots beautifully polished—again gratis—by any bootblack in the town. Many times he came into our store, asked to see some articles of merchandise, looked them over carefully, and selecting what he wanted, said ponderously:

“I am the Emperor Norton. I will settle for this when I come into my throne.”

No one ever knew where he lived. He never asked to have anything sent home, and his purchases were never extravagant. His imagination was slow when it came to material things, or he may have been sly enough to know just how far to go. If he needed a little small change, he sold, at a discount, beautifully made out drafts on his future exchequer.

Many a time I have seen him walk into a restaurant with measured tread—he never hurried. The head waiter would rush up to greet him respectfully. The Emperor would ask:

“Is my food ready?”

“Right away, Emperor.”

He would be seated at the best table and given the best the house afforded. Having finished, he would walk out majestically without paying, of course. The Emperor Norton never got out of his part.

This could never have happened in the East. In Concord, Massachusetts, people would have lifted their eyebrows and given him food and raiment as if he were a tramp, but indulged him in his whimsies—never! In New York, those smart society women who send their daughters out upon Fifth Avenue to beg money for various charities would most certainly have had the Emperor Norton put in an institution for the insane.