ce so abundantly bestows upon him. At
least, I heard a little rat of a creature with hock-bottle shoulders
explaining that a man from Chicago could pull the eye-teeth of a
Californian in business.

Well, if I lived in fairy-land, where cherries were as big as plums,
plums as big as apples, and strawberries of no account, where the
procession of the fruits of the seasons was like a pageant in a Drury
Lane pantomime and the dry air was wine, I should let business slide
once in a way and kick up my heels with my fellows. The tale of the
resources of California--vegetable and mineral--is a fairy-tale. You can
read it in books. You would never believe me.

All manner of nourishing food, from sea-fish to beef, may be bought at
the lowest prices, and the people are consequently well-developed and of
a high stomach. They demand ten shillings for tinkering a jammed lock of
a trunk; they receive sixteen shillings a day for working as carpenters;
they spend many sixpences on very bad cigars, which the poorest of them
smoke, and they go mad over a prize-fight. When they disagree they do so
fatally, with fire-arms in their hands, and on the public streets. I
was just clear of Mission Street when the trouble began between two
gentlemen, one of whom perforated the other.

When a policeman, whose name I do not recollect, "fatally shot Ed
Hearney" for attempting to escape arrest, I was in the next street. For
these things I am thankful. It is enough to travel with a policeman in
a tram-car, and, while he arranges his coat-tails as he sits down, to
catch sight of a loaded revolver. It is enough to know that fifty per
cent of the men in the public saloons carry pistols about them.

The Chinaman waylays his adversary, and methodically chops him to pieces
with his hatchet. Then the press roars about the brutal ferocity of the
pagan.

The Italian reconstructs his friend with a long knife. The press
complains of the waywardness of the alien.

The Irishman and the native Californian in their hours of discontent use
the revolver, not once, but six times. The press records the fact, and
asks in the next column whether the world can parallel the progress of
San Francisco. The American who loves his country will tell you that
this sort of thing is confined to the lower classes. Just at present an
ex-judge who was sent to jail by another judge (upon my word I cannot
tell whether these titles mean anything) is breathing red-hot vengeance
agai