za. Here were built the first
hotel, the first school-house, the first bank; within a stone's throw
the first Protestant sermon was preached, the first newspaper was
printed and the first post office was opened. It was through the Plaza
that Sam Brannan ran with a bottle of yellow dust in one hand, waving
his hat with the other and shouting, 'Gold! gold! from the American
River!' It was here that the big gambling houses sprang up, where
fortunes were made and lost in a night, and here the first Vigilance
Committee met and executed justice." The old man paused for breath.

I was on the edge of the bench ready for flight. All my good work of the
last two days was rapidly being undermined. I heard again the skeptic's
contemptuous tone of yesterday. "It's either before the fire" or "in the
good old days of forty-nine."

"We--we must go," I stammered, "it's getting very late." The Bostonian
looked at his watch. "Not three o'clock yet." He leaned back
comfortably. "You ought to be interested in this. Your grandfather was a
forty-niner."

I looked at him searchingly. I ought to be interested! I, who cherished
every memory of pioneer days! I, who had bitten my lips a dozen times
that afternoon, and was glorying in the tact and strength of mind which
had avoided this period of our history!

The miner, apparently aware of my presence for the first time, sent me a
piercing glance from beneath his shaggy eyebrows. "So your grandfather--"

"He wasn't exactly a forty-niner," I acknowledged. "He arrived outside
the Heads the night of December thirty-first but there was a heavy fog
and the vessel didn't get inside until the next morning."

"Hard luck," sympathized the old man, "coming near to being a
forty-niner and missing it."

"But it's practically the same thing," persisted the Bostonian. "Only a
few hours."

"The same thing!" scornfully repeated the miner. "There's as much
difference as between Christmas and Fourth of July. A forty-niner's a
forty-niner, and a man that came in fifty--well, he might as well have
come in sixty or seventy, or even in the twentieth century. It's the
forty-niner that counts in this community." He drew himself up proudly.
Then plunging his hand deep into his pocket, drew out a nugget.

"Picked that up off my first claim," he explained, "but the dirt didn't
pan out so well. I've carried it in my pocket all these years, just for
the sentiment of the thing, I suppose. Many a time I was tempted to