s club-footed. However--on second
thought,--if the reader sees any coincidence in this, he must do it at
his own risk.

The first shock brought down two or three huge organ-pipes in one of the
churches. The minister, with uplifted hands, was just closing the
services. He glanced up, hesitated, and said:

"However, we will omit the benediction!"--and the next instant there was
a vacancy in the atmosphere where he had stood.

After the first shock, an Oakland minister said:

"Keep your seats! There is no better place to die than this"--

And added, after the third:

"But outside is good enough!" He then skipped out at the back door.

Such another destruction of mantel ornaments and toilet bottles as the
earthquake created, San Francisco never saw before. There was hardly a
girl or a matron in the city but suffered losses of this kind. Suspended
pictures were thrown down, but oftener still, by a curious freak of the
earthquake's humor, they were whirled completely around with their faces
to the wall! There was great difference of opinion, at first, as to the
course or direction the earthquake traveled, but water that splashed out
of various tanks and buckets settled that. Thousands of people were made
so sea-sick by the rolling and pitching of floors and streets that they
were weak and bed-ridden for hours, and some few for even days
afterward.--Hardly an individual escaped nausea entirely.

The queer earthquake--episodes that formed the staple of San Francisco
gossip for the next week would fill a much larger book than this, and so
I will diverge from the subject.

By and by, in the due course of things, I picked up a copy of the
Enterprise one day, and fell under this cruel blow:

NEVADA MINES IN NEW YORK.--G. M. Marshall, Sheba Hurs and Amos H.
Rose, who left San Francisco last July for New York City, with ores
from mines in Pine Wood District, Humboldt County, and on the Reese
River range, have disposed of a mine containing six thousand feet
and called the Pine Mountains Consolidated, for the sum of
$3,000,000. The stamps on the deed, which is now on its way to
Humboldt County, from New York, for record, amounted to $3,000,
which is said to be the largest amount of stamps ever placed on one
document. A working capital of $1,000,000 has been paid into the
treasury, and machinery has already been purchased for a large
quartz mill, w