s
empty. The ordinarily proud city had nothing to show.

Moses at Pisgah gazed upon the land he was not to enter. My Pisgah was
reached at the end of 1916. My halls of service were temporary. The new
City Hall was not occupied until just after I had found my political
Moab; the pleasure of sitting in a hall which is pronounced the most
beautiful in America was not for me.

As I look back upon varied public service, I am not clear as to its
value; but I do not regret having tried to do my part. My practical
creed was never to seek and never to decline opportunity to serve. I
feel that the effort to do what I was able to do hardly justified
itself; but it always seemed worth trying, and I do not hold myself
responsible for results. I am told that in parts of California
infinitesimal diatoms form deposits five thousand feet in thickness. If
we have but little to give we cannot afford not to give it.

CHAPTER VIII

AN INVESTMENT

On the morning of October 18, 1850, there appeared in San Francisco's
morning paper the following notice:

RELIGIOUS INTELLIGENCE There will be Religious Services (Unitarian)
on Sunday Morning next, October 20th, at Simmons' Athenaeum Hall.
Entrance on Commercial and Sacramento Streets. A Discourse will be
preached by Rev. Charles A. Farley.

San Francisco at this time was a community very unlike any known to
history. Two years before it is said to have numbered eight hundred
souls, and two years before that about two hundred. During the year
1849, perhaps thirty thousand men had come from all over the world, of
whom many went to the mines. The directory of that year contained
twenty-five hundred names. By October, 1850, the population may have
been twenty thousand. They were scattered thinly over a hilly and rough
peninsula, chaparral-covered but for drifting sand and with few
habitable valleys. From Pacific to California streets and from Dupont to
the bay was the beginning of the city's business. A few streets were
graded and planked. Clay Street stretched up to Stockton. To the south
mountains of sand filled the present Market Street, and protected by
them nestled Happy Valley, reaching from First to Third streets and
beyond Mission. In 1849 it was a city of tents. Wharves were pushing out
into the bay. Long Wharf (Commercial Street) reached deep water about
where Drumm Street now crosses it.

Among the motley argonauts were a goodly number of New Englanders