For
a
few
months
I
enjoyed
what
to
me
was
an
entirely
new
phase
of
existence—a
butterfly
idleness;
nothing
to
do,
nobody
to
be
responsible
to,
and
untroubled
with
financial uneasiness. I
fell
in
love
with
the
most
cordial
and
sociable
city
in
the
Union.
After
the
sage-brush
and
alkali
deserts
of
Washoe, San Francisco
was
Paradise
to
me. I
lived
at
the
best
hotel,
exhibited
my
clothes
in
the
most
conspicuous
places,
infested
the
opera,
and
learned
to
seem
enraptured
with
music
which
oftener
afflicted my
ignorant
ear
than
enchanted it,
if
I had had
the
vulgar
honesty
to
confess
it. However, I
suppose
I
was
not
greatly
worse
than
the
most
of
my countrymen
in
that. I had
longed
to
be
a butterfly,
and
I
was
one
at
last. I
attended
private
parties
in
sumptuous
evening
dress,
simpered
and
aired my
graces
like
a
born
beau,
and
polkad
and
schottisched
with
a
step
peculiar
to
myself—and
the
kangaroo.
In
a word, I kept
the
due
state
of
a
man
worth
a
hundred
thousand
dollars
(prospectively,)
and
likely
to
reach
absolute
affluence
when
that
silver-
mine
sale
should
be
ultimately
achieved
in
the
East. I spent
money
with
a
free
hand,
and
meantime
watched
the
stock
sales
with
an
interested
eye
and
looked
to
see
what
might
happen
in
Nevada.
Something
very
important
happened.
The
property
holders
of
Nevada
voted against
the
State
Constitution;
but
the
folks
who
had
nothing
to
lose
were
in
the
majority,
and
carried
the
measure
over
their
heads.
But
after
all
it
did
not
immediately
look
like
a disaster,
though
unquestionably
it
was
one
I hesitated, calculated
the
chances,
and
then
concluded
not
to
sell. Stocks went
on
rising;
speculation
went mad; bankers, merchants, lawyers, doctors, mechanics, laborers,
even
the
very
washerwomen
and
servant
girls,
were
putting
up
their
earnings
on
silver
stocks,
and
every
sun
that
rose
in
the
morning
went
down
on
paupers
enriched
and
rich
men beggared.
What
a gambling
carnival
it
was! Gould
and
Curry
soared
to
six
thousand
three
hundred
dollars
a foot!
And
then—all
of
a sudden,
out
went
the
bottom
and
everything
and
everybody went
to
ruin
and
destruction!
The
wreck
was
complete.
The
bubble
scarcely
left a microscopic
moisture
behind
it. I
was
an
early
beggar
and
a
thorough
one. My
hoarded
stocks
were
not
worth
the
paper
they
were
printed
on. I threw
them
all
away. I,
the
cheerful
idiot
that
had been squandering
money
like
water,
and
thought
myself
beyond
the
reach
of
misfortune, had
not
now
as
much
as
fifty
dollars
when
I
gathered
together
my
various
debts
and
paid them. I removed
from
the
hotel
to
a
very
private
boarding house. I
took
a reporter's berth
and
went
to
work. I
was
not
entirely
broken
in
spirit,
for
I
was
building
confidently
on
the
sale
of
the
silver
mine
in
the
east.
But
I
could
not
hear
from
Dan. My letters miscarried
or
were
not
answered.
One
day
I
did
not
feel
vigorous
and
remained
away
from
the
office.
The
next
day
I went
down
toward
noon
as
usual,
and
found a
note
on
my
desk
which
had been
there
twenty-four hours.
It
was
signed
"Marshall"—the
Virginia
reporter—and
contained
a
request
that
I
should
call
at
the
hotel
and
see
him
and
a
friend
or
two
that
night,
as
they
would
sail
for
the
east
in
the
morning. A
postscript
added
that
their
errand
was
a
big
mining speculation! I
was
hardly
ever
so
sick
in
my life. I
abused
myself
for
leaving
Virginia
and
entrusting
to
another
man
a
matter
I
ought
to
have
attended
to
myself; I
abused
myself
for
remaining
away
from
the
office
on
the
one
day
of
all
the
year
that
I
should
have
been there.
And
thus
berating
myself
I
trotted
a
mile
to
the
steamer
wharf
and
arrived
just
in
time
to
be
too
late.
The
ship
was
in
the
stream
and
under
way. I
comforted
myself
with
the
thought
that
may
be
the
speculation
would
amount
to
nothing—poor
comfort
at
best—and
then
went
back
to
my slavery, resolved
to
put
up
with
my thirty-five
dollars
a
week
and
forget
all
about
it. A
month
afterward
I
enjoyed
my
first
earthquake.
It
was
one
which
was
long
called
the
"great" earthquake,
and
is
doubtless
so
distinguished
till
this
day.
It
was
just
after
noon,
on
a
bright
October
day. I
was
coming
down
Third
street.
The
only
objects
in
motion
anywhere
in
sight
in
that
thickly
built
and
populous
quarter,
were
a
man
in
a buggy
behind
me,
and
a
street
car
wending
slowly
up
the
cross
street. Otherwise,
all
was
solitude
and
a
Sabbath
stillness.
As
I
turned
the
corner,
around
a
frame
house,
there
was
a
great
rattle
and
jar,
and
it
occurred
to
me
that
here
was
an
item!—no
doubt
a
fight
in
that
house.
Before
I
could
turn
and
seek
the
door,
there
came a really
terrific
shock;
the
ground
seemed
to
roll
under
me
in
waves, interrupted
by
a
violent
joggling
up
and
down,
and
there
was
a heavy grinding
noise
as
of
brick
houses
rubbing
together. I
fell
up
against
the
frame
house
and
hurt my elbow. I
knew
what
it
was, now,
and
from
mere
reportorial
instinct,
nothing
else,
took
out
my
watch
and
noted
the
time
of
day;
at
that
moment
a
third
and
still
severer
shock came,
and
as
I reeled
about
on
the
pavement
trying
to
keep
my footing, I
saw
a sight!
The
entire
front
of
a
tall
four-story
brick
building
in
Third
street
sprung
outward
like
a
door
and
fell
sprawling
across
the
street,
raising
a dust
like
a
great
volume
of
smoke!
And
here
came
the
buggy—overboard went
the
man,
and
in
less
time
than
I
can
tell
it
the
vehicle
was
distributed
in
small
fragments
along
three
hundred
yards
of
street.
One
could
have
fancied
that
somebody had
fired
a
charge
of
chair-rounds
and
rags
down
the
thoroughfare.
The
street
car
had stopped,
the
horses
were
rearing
and
plunging,
the
passengers
were
pouring
out
at
both
ends,
and
one
fat
man
had crashed
half
way
through
a glass
window
on
one
side
of
the
car, got wedged
fast
and
was
squirming
and
screaming
like
an
impaled
madman.
Every
door,
of
every
house,
as
far
as
the
eye
could
reach,
was
vomiting
a
stream
of
human
beings;
and
almost
before
one
could
execute
a wink
and
begin
another,
there
was
a massed
multitude
of
people
stretching
in
endless
procession
down
every
street
my position commanded.
Never
was
solemn
solitude
turned
into
teeming
life
quicker.
Of
the
wonders
wrought
by
"the
great
earthquake,"
these
were
all
that
came
under
my eye;
but
the
tricks
it
did, elsewhere,
and
far
and
wide
over
the
town,
made
toothsome gossip
for
nine
days.
The
destruction
of
property
was
trifling—the
injury
to
it
was
wide-
spread
and
somewhat
serious.
The
"curiosities"
of
the
earthquake
were
simply endless. Gentlemen
and
ladies
who
were
sick,
or
were
taking
a siesta,
or
had
dissipated
till
a
late
hour
and
were
making
up
lost sleep, thronged
into
the
public
streets
in
all
sorts
of
queer apparel,
and
some
without
any
at
all.
One
woman
who
had been
washing
a
naked
child,
ran
down
the
street
holding
it
by
the
ankles
as
if
it
were
a dressed turkey.
Prominent
citizens
who
were
supposed
to
keep
the
Sabbath
strictly,
rushed
out
of
saloons
in
their
shirt-sleeves,
with
billiard cues
in
their
hands.
Dozens
of
men
with
necks
swathed
in
napkins,
rushed
from
barber-shops,
lathered
to
the
eyes
or
with
one
cheek
clean
shaved
and
the
other
still
bearing a hairy stubble.
Horses
broke
from
stables,
and
a frightened
dog
rushed
up
a
short
attic
ladder
and
out
on
to
a roof,
and
when
his
scare
was
over
had
not
the
nerve
to
go
down
again
the
same
way
he
had gone up. A
prominent
editor
flew
down
stairs,
in
the
principal
hotel,
with
nothing
on
but
one
brief
undergarment—met a chambermaid,
and
exclaimed: "Oh,
what
shall
I do!
Where
shall
I go!"
She
responded
with
naive
serenity: "If
you
have
no
choice,
you
might
try
a clothing-store!" A
certain
foreign
consul's
lady
was
the
acknowledged
leader
of
fashion,
and
every
time
she
appeared
in
anything
new
or
extraordinary,
the
ladies
in
the
vicinity
made
a raid
on
their
husbands' purses
and
arrayed
themselves
similarly.
One
man
who
had
suffered
considerably
and
growled
accordingly,
was
standing
at
the
window
when
the
shocks came,
and
the
next
instant
the
consul's wife,
just
out
of
the
bath, fled
by
with
no
other
apology
for
clothing than—a bath-towel!
The
sufferer
rose
superior
to
the
terrors
of
the
earthquake,
and
said
to
his
wife: "Now
that
is
something
like!
Get
out
your
towel
my dear!"
The
plastering
that
fell
from
ceilings
in
San Francisco
that
day,
would
have
covered
several
acres
of
ground.
For
some
days
afterward,
groups
of
eyeing
and
pointing men stood
about
many
a building,
looking
at
long
zig- zag cracks
that
extended
from
the
eaves
to
the
ground.
Four
feet
of
the
tops
of
three
chimneys
on
one
house
were
broken
square
off
and
turned
around
in
such
a
way
as
to
completely stop
the
draft. A crack a
hundred
feet
long
gaped
open
six
inches
wide
in
the
middle
of
one
street
and
then
shut
together
again
with
such
force,
as
to
ridge
up
the
meeting
earth
like
a
slender
grave. A
lady
sitting
in
her
rocking
and
quaking
parlor,
saw
the
wall
part
at
the
ceiling,
open
and
shut
twice,
like
a mouth,
and
then-drop
the
end
of
a
brick
on
the
floor
like
a tooth.
She
was
a
woman
easily
disgusted
with
foolishness,
and
she
arose
and
went
out
of
there.
One
lady
who
was
coming
down
stairs
was
astonished
to
see
a
bronze
Hercules
lean
forward
on
its
pedestal
as
if
to
strike
her
with
its
club.
They
both
reached
the
bottom
of
the
flight
at
the
same
time,—the
woman
insensible
from
the
fright.
Her
child,
born
some
little
time afterward,
was
club-footed. However—on
second
thought,—if
the
reader
sees
any
coincidence
in
this,
he
must
do
it
at
his
own
risk.
The
first
shock brought
down
two
or
three
huge
organ-pipes
in
one
of
the
churches.
The
minister,
with
uplifted hands,
was
just
closing
the
services.
He
glanced up, hesitated,
and
said: "However,
we
will
omit
the
benediction!"—and
the
next
instant
there
was
a
vacancy
in
the
atmosphere
where
he
had stood.
After
the
first
shock,
an
Oakland
minister
said: "Keep
your
seats!
There
is
no
better
place
to
die
than
this"—
And
added,
after
the
third: "But outside
is
good
enough!"
He
then
skipped
out
at
the
back
door.
Such
another
destruction
of
mantel
ornaments
and
toilet
bottles
as
the
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:
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.