fair," said Gwynne; "for these men all have enough to pull
out and invest elsewhere. They could go to New York and buy a big
position, as so many of their predecessors have done. Or to London. Of
course no man ever lived that was wholly disinterested, unless he was a
fanatic, but it is vastly to the credit of these men that they love
their own city, stand by it--determined to make it livable, not only for
themselves, but for future generations; instead of moving away and
becoming millionaires of leisure."

"Oh yes, I don't deny that they have enthusiasm--the remnant, no doubt,
of what in their European ancestors was temperament. Americans don't
have temperament. Or if we have we are far too self-conscious to show
it. In the East it has been quite eradicated. Out here where gambling is
still in the blood--and that blood is mixed--where the air is full of
electricity, and the very ground under your feet none too certain, we
are a little more primitive; we have an excitability that makes
strangers find us more like the Latin races of Europe than our relatives
beyond the Rockies. And although the set you admire does not drink, nor
live the all-night life, it has its own demands for spice and variety,
and its own ways of gratifying them. Love of change, love of any sort of
a fight, is in the blood of your true Californian--particularly here in
San Francisco, where all the great gambling fevers, from the days of '49
to the wild speculations in Virginia City stocks in '76, have raged up
and out. Your friends are merely playing a big game. Successive defeats,
and the formidable front of the enemy, make it the more stimulating.
They have that fanatical love of San Francisco that every one out here
has who doesn't hate it, and they find it more exciting to stay here and
gamble for big stakes than to watch their wives spend money in New York,
and console them for snubs. Another point--they are far more
enterprising than the rich men's sons that preceded this generation--or
set, rather. They keep on making money, you may have observed. And
fashions change. New York Society is no longer the Mecca of the worldly
San Franciscan, and it has also become the fashion to invest huge
amounts here; in many cases, entire fortunes. These men really could not
pull out without great loss of income, and they all know how safe it is
to leave one's interests in other people's hands. In this town, at
least, no one has ever done that without regrettin