Roughing It
earthquake created, San Francisco never saw before. There was hardly a
girl or a matron in the city but suffered losses of this kind. Suspended
pictures were thrown down, but oftener still, by a curious freak of the
earthquake’s humor, they were whirled completely around with their faces
to the wall! There was great difference of opinion, at first, as to the
course or direction the earthquake traveled, but water that splashed out
of various tanks and buckets settled that. Thousands of people were made
so sea-sick by the rolling and pitching of floors and streets that they
were weak and bed-ridden for hours, and some few for even days
afterward.—Hardly an individual escaped nausea entirely.
The queer earthquake—episodes that formed the staple of San Francisco
gossip for the next week would fill a much larger book than this, and so
I will diverge from the subject.
By and by, in the due course of things, I picked up a copy of the
Enterprise one day, and fell under this cruel blow:
NEVADA MINES IN NEW YORK.—G. M. Marshall, Sheba Hurs and Amos H. Rose,
who left San Francisco last July for New York City, with ores from mines
in Pine Wood District, Humboldt County, and on the Reese River range,
have disposed of a mine containing six thousand feet and called the Pine
Mountains Consolidated, for the sum of $3,000,000. The stamps on the
deed, which is now on its way to Humboldt County, from New York, for
record, amounted to $3,000, which is said to be the largest amount of
stamps ever placed on one document. A working capital of $1,000,000 has
been paid into the treasury, and machinery has already been purchased
for a large quartz mill, which will be put up as soon as possible. The
stock in this company is all full paid and entirely unassessable. The
ores of the mines in this district somewhat resemble those of the Sheba
mine in Humboldt. Sheba Hurst, the discoverer of the mines, with his
friends corralled all the best leads and all the land and timber they
desired before making public their whereabouts. Ores from there, assayed
in this city, showed them to be exceedingly rich in silver and
gold—silver predominating. There is an abundance of wood and water in
the District. We are glad to know that New York capital has been
enlisted in the development of the mines of this region. Having seen the
ores and assays, we are satisfied that the mines of the District are
very valuable—anything but wild-cat.
Once more native imbecility had carried the day, and I had lost a
million! It was the “blind lead” over again.
Let us not dwell on this miserable matter. If I were inventing these
things, I could be wonderfully humorous over them; but they are too true
to be talked of with hearty levity, even at this distant day. [True, and
yet not exactly as given in the above figures, possibly. I saw Marshall,
months afterward, and although he had plenty of money he did not claim
to have captured an entire million. In fact I gathered that he had not
then received $50,000. Beyond that figure his fortune appeared to
consist of uncertain vast expectations rather than prodigious
certainties. However, when the above item appeared in print I put full
faith in it, and incontinently wilted and went to seed under it.]
Suffice it that I so lost heart, and so yielded myself up to repinings
and sighings and foolish regrets, that I neglected my duties and became
about worthless, as a reporter for a brisk newspaper. And at last one of
the proprietors took me aside, with a charity I still remember with
considerable respect, and gave me an opportunity to resign my berth and
so save myself the disgrace of a dismissal.
CHAPTER LIX.
For a time I wrote literary screeds for the Golden Era. C. H. Webb had
established a very excellent literary weekly called the Californian, but
high merit was no guaranty of success; it languished, and he sold out to
three printers, and Bret Harte became editor at $20 a week, and I was
employed to contribute an article a week at $12. But the journal still
languished, and the printers sold out to Captain Ogden, a rich man and a
pleasant gentleman who chose to amuse himself with such an expensive
luxury without much caring about the cost of it. When he grew tired of
the novelty, he re-sold to the printers, the paper presently died a
peaceful death, and I was out of work again. I would not mention these
things but for the fact that they so aptly illustrate the ups and downs
that characterize life on the Pacific coast. A man could hardly stumble
into such a variety of queer vicissitudes in any other country.
For two months my sole occupation was avoiding acquaintances; for during
that time I did not earn a penny, or buy an article of any kind, or pay
my board. I became a very adept at “slinking.” I slunk from back street
to back street, I slunk away from approaching faces that looked
familiar, I slunk to my meals, ate them humbly and with a mute apology
for every mouthful I robbed my generous landlady of, and at midnight,
after wanderings that were but slinkings away from cheerfulness and
light, I slunk to my bed. I felt meaner, and lowlier and more despicable
than the worms. During all this time I had but one piece of money—a
silver ten cent piece—and I held to it and would not spend it on any
account, lest the consciousness coming strong upon me that I was
entirely penniless, might suggest suicide. I had pawned every thing but
the clothes I had on; so I clung to my dime desperately, till it was
smooth with handling.
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However, I am forgetting. I did have one other occupation beside that of
“slinking.” It was the entertaining of a collector (and being
entertained by him,) who had in his hands the Virginia banker’s bill for
forty-six dollars which I had loaned my schoolmate, the “Prodigal.” This
man used to call regularly once a week and dun me, and sometimes
oftener. He did it from sheer force of habit, for he knew he could get
nothing. He would get out his bill, calculate the interest for me, at
five per cent a month, and show me clearly that there was no attempt at
fraud in it and no mistakes; and then plead, and argue and dun with all
his might for any sum—any little trifle—even a dollar—even half a
dollar, on account. Then his duty was accomplished and his conscience
free. He immediately dropped the subject there always; got out a couple
of cigars and divided, put his feet in the window, and then we would
have a long, luxurious talk about everything and everybody, and he would
furnish me a world of curious dunning adventures out of the ample store
in his memory. By and by he would clap his hat on his head, shake hands
and say briskly:
“Well, business is business—can’t stay with you always!”—and was off in
a second.
The idea of pining for a dun! And yet I used to long for him to come,
and would get as uneasy as any mother if the day went by without his
visit, when I was expecting him. But he never collected that bill, at
last nor any part of it. I lived to pay it to the banker myself.
Misery loves company. Now and then at night, in out-of-the way, dimly
lighted places, I found myself happening on another child of misfortune.
He looked so seedy and forlorn, so homeless and friendless and forsaken,
that I yearned toward him as a brother. I wanted to claim kinship with
him and go about and enjoy our wretchedness together. The drawing toward
each other must have been mutual; at any rate we got to falling together
oftener, though still seemingly by accident; and although we did not
speak or evince any recognition, I think the dull anxiety passed out of
both of us when we saw each other, and then for several hours we would
idle along contentedly, wide apart, and glancing furtively in at home
lights and fireside gatherings, out of the night shadows, and very much
enjoying our dumb companionship.
Finally we spoke, and were inseparable after that. For our woes were
identical, almost. He had been a reporter too, and lost his berth, and
this was his experience, as nearly as I can recollect it. After losing
his berth he had gone down, down, down, with never a halt: from a
boarding house on Russian Hill to a boarding house in Kearney street;
from thence to Dupont; from thence to a low sailor den; and from thence
to lodgings in goods boxes and empty hogsheads near the wharves. Then;
for a while, he had gained a meagre living by sewing up bursted sacks of
grain on the piers; when that failed he had found food here and there as
chance threw it in his way. He had ceased to show his face in daylight,
now, for a reporter knows everybody, rich and poor, high and low, and
cannot well avoid familiar faces in the broad light of day.
This mendicant Blucher—I call him that for convenience—was a splendid
creature. He was full of hope, pluck and philosophy; he was well read
and a man of cultivated taste; he had a bright wit and was a master of
satire; his kindliness and his generous spirit made him royal in my eyes
and changed his curb-stone seat to a throne and his damaged hat to a
crown.
He had an adventure, once, which sticks fast in my memory as the most
pleasantly grotesque that ever touched my sympathies. He had been
without a penny for two months. He had shirked about obscure streets,
among friendly dim lights, till the thing had become second nature to
him. But at last he was driven abroad in daylight. The cause was
sufficient; _he had not tasted food for forty-eight hours_, and he could
not endure the misery of his hunger in idle hiding. He came along a back
street, glowering at the loaves in bake-shop windows, and feeling that
he could trade his life away for a morsel to eat. The sight of the bread
doubled his hunger; but it was good to look at it, any how, and imagine
what one might do if one only had it.
Presently, in the middle of the street he saw a shining spot—looked
again—did not, and could not, believe his eyes—turned away, to try them,
then looked again. It was a verity—no vain, hunger-inspired delusion—it
was a silver dime!
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He snatched it—gloated over it; doubted it—bit it—found it
genuine—choked his heart down, and smothered a halleluiah. Then he
looked around—saw that nobody was looking at him—threw the dime down
where it was before—walked away a few steps, and approached again,
pretending he did not know it was there, so that he could re-enjoy the
luxury of finding it. He walked around it, viewing it from different
points; then sauntered about with his hands in his pockets, looking up
at the signs and now and then glancing at it and feeling the old thrill
again. Finally he took it up, and went away, fondling it in his pocket.
He idled through unfrequented streets, stopping in doorways and corners
to take it out and look at it. By and by he went home to his lodgings—an
empty queens-ware hogshead,—and employed himself till night trying to
make up his mind what to buy with it. But it was hard to do. To get the
most for it was the idea. He knew that at the Miner’s Restaurant he
could get a plate of beans and a piece of bread for ten cents; or a
fish-ball and some few trifles, but they gave “no bread with one fish-
ball” there. At French Pete’s he could get a veal cutlet, plain, and
some radishes and bread, for ten cents; or a cup of coffee—a pint at
least—and a slice of bread; but the slice was not thick enough by the
eighth of an inch, and sometimes they were still more criminal than that
in the cutting of it. At seven o’clock his hunger was wolfish; and still
his mind was not made up. He turned out and went up Merchant street,
still ciphering; and chewing a bit of stick, as is the way of starving
men.
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He passed before the lights of Martin’s restaurant, the most