anker, G., on the plaza, and presented my check for $800. He said to
me, if it made no difference, it being steamer day (once a month they
went East when the gold was shipped to the mint in Philadelphia by
them), and if I would call in the morning for it, it would be an
accommodation to him. I said I wanted to use it. He commenced weighing
it out. I then thought it would make no difference to me and it was
mean not to accommodate him, for I might want some favor of him. I said,
if I can have it in three days without fail it would answer my purpose.
He said, you can have it now, pouring the gold in the scales to weigh
it. I said never mind, I don't want it now. The fire came that night,
burnt his place up and all his property. He was a ruined man. I never
saw him afterward.

Mr. G., to whom I had bargained to sell my houses to arrive, (and he
backed out) was an Englishman from Liverpool. He had about all the
consignments of shipments from that city (evidently being very popular
there), to sell on commission at ten per cent; when the goods came and
were sold, instead of remitting the capital to the owners and being
satisfied with his commission, he used it in buying property and in
erecting buildings in San Francisco. He had constructed a fire-proof
building which he rented to the government for a post-office, at a large
sum per month, likewise the first theatre in the city, and other
buildings. He informed me at one time how much his rents amounted to per
month; the sum was several thousand dollars. Money was worth but three
to five per cent in England per year to the owners of the merchandise;
while in California it was in demand at ten per cent per month. I
suppose he thought he would make a great fortune for himself and then
return to England (where he had a wife and children) and pay up all his
obligations with extra allowance, for the use of the money, and make all
satisfactory; but the great fire destroyed all his buildings, and he was
a ruined man, there being no insurance in the city then. I met a friend
in New York about two years after my return from California; I asked him
when he saw Mr. G. last. He said, "it was about 11 o'clock one day at a
hotel where he invited some friends to take a drink. Mr. G. was there,
he declined; but afterward called him to one side and asked him to loan
him $1, saying he had had no breakfast that morning." Such was an
example of some of the fluctuations of fortune in those days.