these fifteen years, and had bought a pair of evening
shoes and a white necktie. Eugene Fort remarked that he looked like a
man whose vital organs had turned to gold and were giving him trouble.
Mr. Washington replied that the tight skin which had done such good
service was certainly beginning to bag, and that if he didn't knock off
and take a vacation in Europe he'd find himself breaking.

"To my knowledge," he added, "he hasn't taken a vacation in thirty
years; hasn't even been to Yosemite or the Big Trees. He has always said
that work was his tonic; but the truth was that he feared to come home
and find a dollar unaccounted for,--neither more nor less. And there
comes a time, my dear young man, there comes a time--"

"It comes early in this State."

"It does," Mr. Washington replied, with a sigh and a glance at his young
wife. "But the fevers have raged themselves out here, or I am much
mistaken. We're in for quiet times. The next generation will live
longer, perhaps."

"How old is Polk?"

"Nearly sixty. He's worn better than many, because he's let whiskey
alone; never took a drop more than was good for him when Con. Virginia
was tumbling from seven hundred to nothing. Neither did Yorba, who is
several years older; but he's got the longevity of his race. Jack
Belmont is under fifty, and looks older than either,--when you get him
in a good light. California is all right, and whiskey is all right, but
the two together play the devil and no mistake."

"It is the last place where I should want whiskey," said Trennahan, who
had joined them.

"You weren't here half a dozen years ago. While the Virginia City mines
were booming, your backbone felt like a streak of lightning; you hadn't
a comma in your very thoughts; you woke up every morning in a cold
sweat, and your teeth chattered as you opened your newspaper. You
believed every man a liar and dreamt that your veins ran liquid gold.
The Stock Exchange was Hell let loose. Men went insane. Men committed
suicide. No one stopped to remark. Do you wonder that men watered the
roots of their nerves with alcohol? I did not, but the fever of that
time burnt me out, all the same. I've never been the same man since. Nor
has any other San Franciscan. Even Polk and Yorba, although they sold
out at the right moment in nine cases out of ten, felt the strain. As
for Jack Belmont, he was on one glorious drunk all the time,--and never
more of a gentleman. How he pulled through and d