I'm one of them. I wish you could have seen it in the early days."
His eyes kindled with excitement. "It was only a barren hillside, but
there was always something doing then. All the town meetings were held
here in the open air and all the parades ended here for the speeches.
The biggest celebration was in 1850, when the October steamer, flying
all her flags, brought the news that California was admitted to the
Union. We went wild, for we had waited for that word for more than a
year. Every ship in the harbor displayed all her bunting and at night
every house was as brilliant as candles and coal oil could make it.
Bonfires blazed on all the hills and the islands and we had music and
dancing all over the town 'til morning."

He paused in reminiscence. "But it wasn't so gay that moonlight night,
the next February, when we hung Jenkins. He was a Sidney Cove and had
just stole a safe, but that was the least of his crimes and of the whole
gang. When we Vigilantes heard the taps on the firebell here in the
Plaza, we gathered in front of the committee rooms. Nobody was excited;
we just had to drive out the Sidney Coves and put an end to crime. We
marched Jenkins here and hung him over there to the beam on the south
end of the Custom House. Forty of us pulled on the rope, while a
thousand more stood 'round as solemn as a prayer meeting to give us
moral support and shoulder the responsibility. It wasn't no joke hanging
a man, but it had to be done, if decent men was to live here."

He shook off his depression. "Everybody was in the Plaza sometime in the
day, and once a month when Telegraph Hill signaled a steamer, everybody
was here."

"Telegraph Hill? I never heard of it," he cast an accusing glance in my
direction.

"It belongs to forty-nine," I retorted.

"All the shops closed immediately," continued the miner, "and Postmaster
Geary was the most important man in town. The post-office was a block up
the hill at Clay and Pike Streets, but the lines from the windows
stretched down into the Plaza, and over among the tents and chaparral on
California Street Hill. Men stood for hours, sometimes all night, in the
pouring rain, and many a time I sold my place for ten dollars, and even
twenty, to some fellow who had less patience or less time than I.

"But you should have been here on election day in fifty-one." The miner
threw back his head and laughed aloud. "Colonel Jack Hays was running
for sheriff," he resumed, "and his o