shoulders explaining that a man from Chicago could pull the eye-teeth of
a Californian in business. Well, if I lived in Fairyland, where cherries
were as big as plums, plums as big as apples, and strawberries of no
account; where the procession of the fruits of the seasons was like a
pageant in a Drury Lane pantomime and where the dry air was wine, I
should let business slide once in a way and kick up my heels with my
fellows. The tale of the resources of California--vegetable and
mineral--is a fairy tale. You can read it in books. You would never
believe me. All manner of nourishing food from sea-fish to beef may be
bought at the lowest prices; and the people are well developed and of a
high stomach. They demand ten shillings for tinkering a jammed lock of a
trunk; they receive sixteen shillings a day for working as carpenters;
they spend many sixpences on very bad cigars, and they go mad over a
prize-fight. When they disagree, they do so fatally, with firearms in
their hands, and on the public streets. I was just clear of Mission
Street when the trouble began between two gentlemen, one of whom
perforated the other. When a policeman, whose name I do not recollect,
"fatally shot Ed. Kearney," for attempting to escape arrest, I was in
the next street. For these things I am thankful. It is enough to travel
with a policeman in a tram-car and while he arranges his coat-tails as
he sits down, to catch sight of a loaded revolver. It is enough to know
that fifty per cent of the men in the public saloons carry pistols about
them. The Chinaman waylays his adversary and methodically chops him to
pieces with his hatchet. Then the Press roar about the brutal ferocity
of the Pagan. The Italian reconstructs his friend with a long knife. The
Press complains of the waywardness of the alien. The Irishman and the
native Californian in their hours of discontent use the revolver, not
once, but six times. The Press records the fact, and asks in the next
column whether the world can parallel the progress of San Francisco. The
American who loves this country will tell you that this sort of thing is
confined to the lower classes. Just at present an ex-judge who was sent
to jail by another judge (upon my word, I cannot tell whether these
titles mean anything) is breathing red-hot vengeance against his enemy.
The papers have interviewed both parties and confidently expect a fatal
issue.

Now let me draw breath and curse the negro waiter and thr