THE LIBRARY OF
THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES
GIFT
D.P. VailTHE SAN FRANCISCO OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

Stevenson
־Memorial
Portsmouth
Square"The City Loved ,Round
the World״
The
of ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
WITH AN INTRODUCTORY ON THE NEW CITY OF ENCHANTMENT SHOWING HOW THE PHOENIX OF
ROMANTIC PAST HATCHED AN AMERICAN EAGLE FROM HER BURNED NEST
SAN FRANCISCO
PRIVATELY PRINTED FOR W. F. RAUSCHNABEL JANUARY MCMXXIIISAN FRANCISCO
[From the Sea]
Serene, indifferent of Fate,
Thou sittest at the Western Gate;
Upon thy height, so lately won,
Still slant the banners of the sun;
Thou seest the white seas stride their tents, O Warder of two continents!
And, scornful of the peace that flies Thy angry winds and sullen s\ies,
Thou drawest all things, small and great, To thee, beside the Western Gate.
BRET HARTEIntroductory//The Present Metropolis
"It is an odd thing, but everyone	is said to be
seen at San Francisco. It must be a delightful city, and possess all the attractions of the next world.”
,׳Lord Harry, in "The Picture of Dorian Gray”
LORD Harry is not a benevolent ׳־looking gentleman. He is always sneering and ex׳ pressing cynical thoughts; and he grows old without improving his looks or rehabili׳
tating his viewpoint ,,both deplorable shortcomings, one denoting a lack of artistic achievement, the other a static ego.
What the next world may be like is a matter deserving the attention of Congress to set the populace aright; but that it must be a delightful place all will agree, because each can paint its glories to suit his personal prejudices. Lord Harry would paint it as beauty ,,and probably unadorned. A good place, but likely too sug׳ gestive of the possibility of an invasion by the police.
According to the benevolent-looking gentleman who foisted upon me my first ideas on the subject, the next world has its good points and bad ones. One is happy if he pursues the business of getting on; and if he does not there is the very devil to pay.While Stevenson’s San Francisco doubtless could have laid claim to Lord Harry’s idea of attractions, the City now is more like the promised land of my child׳ hood’s benevolent ׳looking gentleman. It is a capital place if one be concerned with the business of getting on; but just turn back, like a spirit thirsting for fleshly anodyne, and there will be the devil to pay.
For San Francisco has undergone a transformation״ or a reformation, as you please. From a strange world cosmopolis it has become an orthodox American me׳ tropolis. And in making this change it has accom׳ plished, as a city, what Lord Harry, as a man, did not: it has matured in looks with its added years without becoming old or flabby; and its ego has taken on a new slant more in keeping with dignity. It is a gay young flirt overwhelmed by the responsibility of rearing a family and rising to the emergency of guarding the brood from smirch. For cities are like people, mirroring the lives of their inhabitants. Look at a city that has become established and you can read upon its very physiognomy the character of its citizens, the same as you can read a man’s character in his face. Both are externalized thought. And cities, like humans, can be good, or bad, or in the process of becoming one or theother, they can be some of both. And these varying stages will be writ upon their physical surfaces.
I did not know the old San Francisco, arriving after fire, and earthquake [fears of which R.L.S. voices with such graphic eloquence], and the police commission had had their way. The Barbary Coast, last remnant of the garish old Cosmopolis, was soon to be closed. The Exposition, marking the advent of the new order of progress, was soon to open. Visitors were not to be reminded of the City that was, but were to be inspired with the spirit of the City that was to be.
And now the City that was to be is.
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Human life is a battle against destiny. San Francisco has been overtaken by the destiny of its humans. It has ceased to be of the world and has become of America.
And, being an American city, its most marked change has been brought about by immigration. But, always capricious, San Francisco succumbed to the reflex of the usual immigration. A foreign city on American shores, it has experienced an American invasion. What has followed is what generally follows an American invasion. For while San Francisco is not yet the twin of all other American cities of any considerable size, itis rapidly becoming so. The family resemblance grows more striking every day. It is still some of the old, but it is mostly of the new. And what little of the old re׳ mains is changed. It would not be recognized by R.L.S.
The bay is still there, still "girt with hills, or lying broad to the horizon,” "a great city covers the sand׳ hills on the west” and "its long streets lie in regular bars of darkness, east and west, across the sparkling picture ”’׳'but what a different city to the one that as׳ tonished Stevenson, and what different streets! Gone from the downtown section are the picturesque wood׳ en buildings, replaced by modern American skyscrap׳ ers of less intriguing aspect, gone the familiar alarm of the fire׳bell, and the fear evoked by that dread sound, gone to a large extent the mingling of races [for the strange foreigner is now the orthodox American, or he, too, is gone], gone the "airs of Marseilles and of Pekin,” gone the "shops like consulates of different nations.” Even the shops of Chinatown are mostly Anglo׳Saxon except for the wares they display; and many Chinese articles are the product of United States factories. And that "chill of horror” occasioned by the "mystery” of Chinatown is now mere play׳aCting for the routine entertainment of tourists. Gone, too, "the cellars ofpublic entertainment which the wary pleasure׳seeker chooses to avoid,” and the vigilance committee, that "mediaeval Fehmgericht” whose seat was none other than the Palace Hotel ״why, the last vigilance com׳ mittee was composed of gentle creatures whose seat was a woman’s club, no more prosaic than the Palace of romantic memory has become today. That touch of the commonplace discerned by Stevenson only in the better parts of the City is now the general air, and the dilettante will find but little that is characteristic and original even in the slums and not at all in the suburbs.
The native San Franciscan, still proudly strutting the dearly ׳beloved hills, will quarrel with the viewpoint that the City has become regimented to the American idea of humdrum practicality. With a show of the old׳ time bluster, which Stevenson depicts in the chapter entitled, Faces on the City Front, he will point to this or that interesting or picturesque spot; but question him, and, as likely as not, he will agressively proclaim the fact that he " never has been any further East than Tahoe, and, the good Lord willing, he never will go.” And I wonder just how much that the old San Fran׳ ciscan sees dwells only in affection and tradition’׳«׳for most other cities have slums and "quarters,” and mostof these sections are "interesting” to one who carries interest to them.
Stevenson wondered what "enchantment of the 'Arabian Nights’ can have equalled the evocation of a roaring city, in a few years of a man’s life, from the marshes and blowing sand.” He would not wonder at the evocation of the new City from the colorful hud׳ die of the old. Today there are pamphlets and reports of the Chamber of Commerce and kindred commercial organizations to enlighten him. For, O, Seeker after Romance, know that San Francisco produces every so often such and such a quantity of this and that, that she equals so and so in which, and actually sur׳ passes whoisit in what.
The first chapter of the City’s history has been writ׳ ten in adventurous literature. The second chapter is being printed in row upon row of figures. The com׳ mercial metropolis of the West wants your business.
Come with us to Paris next vacation and we will show you how to have a good time. For
"San Francisco Knows How!”
’׳’׳Perry EpstenSAN FRANCISCO OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
The following vivid picture of the old San Francisco was written by Stevenson at Davos, Switzerland, in 1882, soon after his return from California, as a contribution to the London Magazine of Art ׳• *
San Francisco ״A Modern Cosmopolis
The Pacific coast of the United States, as you may see by the map, and still better in that admirable book, Two Tears Before the Mast, by
Dana, is one of the most exposed and shelter׳ less on earth. The trade-wind blows fresh; the huge Pacific swell booms along degree after de׳ gree of an unbroken line of coast. South of the joint firth of the Columbia and Willamette, there flows in no considerable river; south of Puget Sound there is no protected inlet of the ocean. Along the whole seaboard of California there are but two unexceptionable anchorages, the bight of the Bay of Monterey, and the in׳ land sea that takes its name from San Francisco.Whether or not it was here that Drake put in, in 1597,we cannot tell. There is no other place so suitable; yet the narrative of Francis Pretty scarcely seems to suit the features of the scene. Viewed from seaward, the Golden Gate should give no very English impression to justify the name of a New Albion. On the west, the deep lies open; nothing near but the still vexed Farallones. The coast is rough and barren. Tamalpais, a mountain of a memorable figure, springing direct from the sea-level, over-plumbs the narrow entrance from the north. On the south, the loud music of the Pacific sounds a-long beaches and cliffs, and among broken reefs, the sporting place of the sea-lion. Dismal, shifting sand-hills, wrinkled by the wind, appear behind. Perhaps, too, in the days of Drake, Tamalpais would be clothed to its peak with the majestic redwoods.
Within the memory of persons not yet old, a mariner might have steered into these narrows [not yet the Golden Gate], opened out the sur-face of the bay’׳’׳here girt with hills, there lying broad to the horizon»׳’׳and beheld a scene as empty of the presence, as pure from the handi-works of man, as in the days of our old sea commander. A Spanish mission,fort,and church took the place of those "houses of the people of the country” which were seen by Pretty, "close to the water-side.” All else would be unchanged. Now, a generation later, a great city covers the sand-hills on the west, a growing town lies along the muddy shallows of the east; steamboats pant continually between them from before sunrise till the small hours of the morning; lines of great sea-going ships lie ranged at anchor; colors fly upon the islands; and from all around, the hum of corporate life, of beaten bells, and steam, and of running carriages, goes cheerily abroad in the sunshine. Choose a place on one of the huge, throbbing ferry-boats, and, when you are midway between the city and the suburb, look around. The air is fresh and salt, as if you were at sea. On the one hand isOakland, gleaming white among its gardens. On the other, to the seaward, hill after hill is crowded and crowned with the palaces of San Francisco; its long streets lie in regular bars of darkness, east and west, across the sparkling picture; a forest of masts bristles like bulrushes about its feet. Nothing remains of the days of Drake but the faithful trade ׳wind scattering the smoke, the fogs that will begin to muster about sundown, and the fine bulk of Tamalpais looking down on San Francisco, like Arthur s Seat on Edinburgh.
Thus in the course of a generation only, this city and its suburbs have arisen. Men are alive by the score who have hunted all over the foun׳ dations in a dreary waste. I have dined, near the "punctual centre” of San Francisco, with a gen׳ tleman [then newly married] who told me of his former pleasures, wading with his fowling׳ piece in sand and scrub, on the site of the house where we were dining. In this busy, moving generation, we have all known cities to coverour boyish playgrounds, we have all started for a country walk and stumbled on a new sub׳ urb; but I wonder what enchantment of the "Arabian Nights” can have equalled this evoca׳ tion of a roaring city, in a few years of a mans life, from the marshes and the blowing sand. Such swiftness of increase, as with an over׳ grown youth, suggests a corresponding swift׳ ness of destruction. The sandy peninsula of San Francisco, mirroring itself on one side in the bay, beaten on the other by the surge of the Pacific, and shaken to the heart by frequent earthquakes, seems in itself no very durable foundation. According to Indian tales, perhaps older than the name of California, it once rose out of the sea in a moment, and some time or other shall, in a moment, sink again. No Indian, they say, cares to linger on that dreadful land. "The earth hath bubbles as the water has, and this is of them.” Here, indeed, all is new, nature as well as towns. The very hills of California have an unfinished look; for the rains and thestreams have not yet carved them to their per״ fecit shape. The forests spring like mushrooms from the unexhausted soil; and they are mown down yearly by forest fires. We are in early geological epochs, changeful and insecure; and we feel, as with a sculptor’s model, that the au״ thor may yet grow weary of, and shatter, the rough sketch.
Fancy apart, San Francisco is a city belea״ guered with alarms. The lower parts, along the bay side, sit on piles; old wrecks decaying, fish dwelling unsunned, beneath populous houses; and a trifling subsidence might drown the busi״ ness quarters in an hour. Earthquakes are not uncommon, they are sometimes threatening in their violence, and the fear of them grows yearly on a resident; he begins with indifler״ ence, ends in sheer panic; and no one feels safe in any but a wooden house. Hence it comes that, in that rainless clime, the whole city is built of timber ״ a woodyard of unusual extent and complication; that fires spring up readily,and, served by the unwearying trade׳wind, swiftly spread; that all over the city there are fire׳signal boxes; that the sound of the bell, tell׳־ ing the number of the threatened ward is soon familiar to the ear; that nowhere else is the art of the fireman carried to so nice a point.
Next, perhaps, in order of strangeness to the speed of its appearance, is the mingling of the races that combine to people it. The town is essentially not Anglo ׳Saxon; still more essen׳ tially not American. The Yankee and English׳ man find themselves alike in a strange country. There are none of those touches ״not of na׳ ture, and I dare scarcely say of art ״by which the Anglo ׳Saxon feels himself at home in so great a diversity of lands. Here, on the contrary, are airs of Marseilles and of Pekin. The shops along the street are like the consulates of dif׳ ferent nations. The passers׳by vary in feature like the slides of a magic lantern. For we are here in that city of gold to which adventurers congregated out of all the winds of heaven; weare in a land that till the other day was ruled and peopled by the countrymen of Cortes; and the sea that laves the piers of San Francisco is the ocean of the East and of the isles of summer. There goes the Mexican, unmistakable; there the blue ״clad Chinaman with his white slip״ pers; there the soft״spoken, brown Kanaka, or perhaps a waif from faraway Malaya. You hear French, German, Italian, Spanish and English indifferently. You taste the food of all nations in the various restaurants; passing from a French prix'fixe, where everyone is French, to a roaring German ordinary, where everyone is German; ending, perhaps, in a cool and silent Chinese tea״ house. For every man, for every race and nation, that city is a foreign city, humming with foreign tongues and customs; and yet each and all have made themselves at home. The Germans have a German theatre and innumerable beer gardens. The French Fall of the Bastille is celebrated with squibs and banners and marching patriots, as noisily as the American Fourth of July. TheItalians have their dear domestic quarter, with Italian caricatures in the windows, Chianti and polenta in the taverns. The Chinese are settled as in China. The goods they offer for sale are as foreign as the lettering on the sign board of the shop: dried fish from the China seas; pale cakes and sweetmeats, the like, perhaps, once eaten by Badroulboudour; nuts of unfriendly shape; ambiguous, outlandish vegetables’׳/mis׳־ shapen, lean, or bulbous ״telling of a country where the trees are not as our trees, and the very back garden is a cabinet of curiosities. The joss house is hard by, heavy with incense, packed with quaint carvings and the parapher׳ nalia of a foreign ceremonial. All these you be׳ hold, crowded together in the narrower arteries of the city, cool, sunless, a little mouldy, with the high, musical sing-song of that alien language in your ears. Yet the houses are of Occidental build; the lines of a hundred telegraphs pass, thick as a ship’s rigging, overhead, a kite hang׳ ing among them, perhaps two^one European,one Chinese in shape and color. Mercantile Jack, the Italian fisher, the Dutch merchant, the Mexi״ can vaquero, go hustling by. At the sunny end of the street, a thoroughfare roars with Euro״ pean traffic; and meanwhile, high and clear,out״ breaks, perhaps, the San Francisco fire alarm, and people stop to count the strokes and in the stations of the double fire service you know that the electric bells are ringing, the traps opening and clapping to, and the engine, manned and harnessed, being whisked into the street, before the sound of the alarm has ceased to vibrate on your ear. Of all romantic places for a boy to loiter in, that Chinese quarter is the most romantic. There, on a halfiholiday, three doors from home, he may visit an actual foreign land, foreign in people, language, things, and customs. The very barber of the "Arabian Nights” shall be at work before him, shaving heads; he shall see Aladdin playing on the streets; who knows but among those nameless vegetables, the fruit of the rose tree itself may be exposed for sale?And the interest is heightened with a chill of horror. Below, you hear, the cellars are alive with mystery; opium dens, where the smokers lie above one another, shelf above shelf, close׳ packed and grovelling in deadly stupor; seats of unknown vices and cruelties, prisons of unac׳ knowledged slaves, secret lazarettoes of disease.
With all this mass of nationalities, crime is common. Amid such a competition of respect׳ abilities, the moral sense is confused; in this camp of gold׳seekers, speech is loud and the hand is ready. There are rough quarters where it is dangerous o’ nights; cellars of public en׳ tertainment which the wary pleasure׳seeker chooses to avoid. Concealed weapons are un׳ lawful, but the law is continually broken. One editor was shot dead while I was there; another walked the streets accompanied by a bravo, his guardian angel. I have been quietly eating a dish of oysters in a restaurant, where, not more than ten minutes after I had left, shots were ex׳ changed and took effect; and one night, aboutten o’clock, I saw a man standing watchfully at a street corner with a long Smith׳and׳Wesson glittering in his hand behind his back. Some׳ body had done something he should not, and was being looked for with a vengeance. It is odd, too, that the seat of the last vigilance com׳ mittee I know of^a mediaeval Fehmgericht !׳/was none other than the Palace Hotel, the world’s greatest caravanserai, served by lifts and lit with electricity; where, in the great glazed court, a band nightly discourses music from a grove of palms. So do extremes meet in this city of contrasts: extremes of wealth and poverty, of apathy and excitement, the conven׳ iences of civilization and red justice of Judge Lynch. The streets lie straight up and down the hills and straight across at right angles, these in the sun, those in the shadow, a trenchant pattern of gloom and glare; and what with the crisp illumination, the sea air singing in your ears, the chill and glitter, the changing aspects both of things and people, the fresh sights atevery corner of your walk ״ sights of the bay, of Tamalpais, of steep, descending streets, of the outspread city *׳*׳whiffs of alien speech, sailors singing on shipboard, Chinese coolies toiling on the shore, crowds brawling all day in the street before the Stock Exchange »׳*׳ one brief impression follows another, and the city leaves upon the mind no general and stable picture, but a profusion of airy and incongruous images, of the sea and shore, the East and West, the summer and the winter.
In the better parts of this most interesting city there is apt to be a touch of the commonplace. It is in the slums and suburbs that the city dilet׳ tante finds his game, and there is nothing more characteristic and original than the outlying quarters of San Francisco. The Chinese district is the most famous; but it is far from the only truffle in the pie. There is many another dingy corner, many a young antiquity, many a terrain vague with that stamp of quaintness that a city׳ lover seeks and dwells on; and the indefiniteprolongation of its streets, up hill and down vale, makes San Francisco a place apart. The same street in its career visits and unites so many different classes of society, here echoing with drays, there lying decorously silent between the mansions of bonanza millionaires, to foun״ der at last among the drifting sands beside Lone Mountain cemetery, or die out among the sheds and the lumber of the north. Thus you may be struck with a spot, set it down for the most romantic in the city, and, glancing at the name plate, find it is on the same street that you your״ self inhabit in another quarter of the town.
The great net of straight thoroughfares lying at right angles, east and west and north and south, over the shoulders of Nob Hill, the hill of palaces, must certainly be counted the best part of San Francisco. It is there that the mil״ lionaires are gathered together, vying with each other in display; looking down upon the busi״ ness wards of the city. That is California Street. Far away down you may pick out a buildingwith a little belfry; that is the Stock Exchange, the heart of San Francisco: a great pump we might call it, continually pumping up the saw ings of the lower quarters into the pockets of the millionaires upon the hill. But these same thoroughfares that enjoy for a while so elegant a destiny have their lines prolonged into more unpleasant places. Some meet their fate in the sands; some must take a cruise in the ilbfamed China quarters; some run into the sea; some per״ ish unwept among pig׳sties and rubbish heaps.
Nob Hill comes, of right, in the place of honor, but the two other hills of San Francisco are more entertaining to explore. On both there are a world of old wooden houses snoozing away all forgotten. Some are of the quaintest design, others only romantic by neglect and age; some are curiously painted; and I have seen one at least with ancient carvings panelled in its wall. Surely they are not of California building, but far voyagers from round the stormy Horn, like those who sent for them and dwelt in them at
first. Brought to be the favorites of the wealthy, they have sunk into these poor, forgotten dis׳ tricfts, where, like old town toasts, they keep each other silent countenance. Telegraph Hill and Rincon Hill, these are the dozing quarters that I recommend to the city dilettante. There stand these forgotten houses, enjoying the un׳ broken sun and quiet. There, if there were such an author, would the San Francisco Fortuné de Bois gobey pitch the first chapter of his mystery. But the first is the quainter of the two. Visited under the broad natural daylight, and with the relief and accent of reality, these scenes have a quality of dreamdand and of the best pages of Dickens. Telegraph Hill, besides, commands a noble view; and as it stands at the turn of the Bay, its skirts are all waterside, and round from North Beach to the Bay Front you can follow doubtful paths from one quaint corner to an׳ other. Everywhere the same tumble׳down decay and sloppy progress, new things yet unmade, old things tottering to their fall; everywherethe same out-at-elbows, many-nationed loung-ers at dim, irregular grog-shops; everywhere the same sea-air and isleted sea prospect; and for a last and more romantic note, you have on the one hand Tamalpais standing high in the blue air, and on the other the tail of that long alignment of three-masted, full-rigged, deep-sea ships that make a forest of spars along the eastern front of San Francisco. In no other port is such a navy congregated. For the coast trade is so trifling, and the ocean trade from round the Horn so large, that the smaller ships are swallowed up and can do nothing to confuse the majestic order of these merchant princes. In an age when the ship of the line is already a thing of the past, and we can never hope to go coasting in a cockboat between the "wooden walls” of a squadron at anchor, there is perhaps no place on earth where the power and beauty of sea architecture can be so perfectly enjoyed as in this bay.Stevenson’s "Faces on the City Front”
The affectionate feeling Stevenson entertained toward San Francisco inheres to every line he wrote about the City, and shows in his marked sympathy toward those picturesque characters who, then, were its most conspicu' ous inhabitants. The following is fromTHE Wrecker ’־«׳
ITH ALL MY OCCUPATIONS, some six afternoons and two or three even׳ ings remained at my disposal every week: a circumstance all the more
agreeable as I was a stranger in a city singular׳ ly picturesque. I visited Chinese and Mexican gambling׳hells, German secret societies, sailors1 boarding-houses, and "dives” of every complex׳ ion of the disreputable and dangerous. I have seen greasy Mexican hands pinned to the table with a knife for cheating, seamen [when blood׳ money ran high] knocked down on the public street and carried insensible on board short׳ handed ships, shots exchanged and the smoke [and the company] dispersing from the doors of the saloon. I have heard cold׳minded Polacks debate on the readiest method of burning SanFrancisco to the ground, hot'headed working men and women bawl and swear in the tribune at the Sandlot, and Kearney himself open his subscription for a gallows, name manufacturers who were to grace it with their dangling bod״ ies, and read aloud to the delighted multitude a telegram of adhesion from a member of the State legislature: all of which preparations of proletarian war were [in a moment] breathed upon and abolished by the mere name and fame of Mr. Coleman. That lion of the Vigilantes had but to rouse himself and shake his ears, and the whole brawling mob was silenced. I could not but reflect what a strange manner of man this was, to be living unremarked there as a private merchant, and to be so feared by a whole city; and if I was disappointed, in my character of looker׳on, to have the matter end ingloriously without the firing of a shot or the hanging of a single millionaire, philosophy tried to tell me this sight was truly the more picturesque. In a thousand towns and different epochs, Imight have had occasion to behold the coward׳ ice and carnage of street fighting; where else, but only there and then, could I have enjoyed a view of Coleman [the intermittent despot] walking meditatively up hill in a quiet part of town, with a very rolling gait, and slapping gently his great thigh?
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I was a frequent wanderer on North Beach, gazing at the straits, and huge Cape ׳Horners creeping out to sea / < < on my homeward way, I might visit that strange and filthy shed, earth׳ paved and walled with cages of wild animals and birds, where at a ramshackle counter, amid yells of monkeys, and a poignant atmosphere of menagerie, forty׳rod whiskey was admin׳ istered by a proprietor as dirty as his beasts. Nor did I even negledt Nob Hill, which is itself a kind of slum, being the habitat of the mere millionaire. There they dwell upon the hilhtop, high raised above man s clamor, and the trade׳ wind blows between their palaces *׳* ׳* ׳Black Tom s, in front, presented the appearance of a fourth-rate saloon, devoted to Kanaka seamen, dirt, negro-head tobacco, bad cigars, worse gin, and guitars and banjos in a state of decline. The proprietor, a powerful colored man, was at once a publican, a ward politician, leader of some brigade of "lambs” or "smashers” at the wind of whose clubs the party bosses and the mayor were supposed to tremble, and [what hurt nothing] an active and reliable crimp. / / *׳ His front quarters were noisy,disreputable; not even safe. I remember one day, not long before an election, seeing a blind man, well dressed, led up to the counter and remain a long while in consultation with the negro. The pair looked so ill-assorted, and the awe with which the drinkers fell back and left them in the midst of an impromptu privacy was so unusual to the place, that I turned to my next neighbor with a question. He told me the blind man was a distinguished party boss [Chris Buckley], called by some the King of San Francisco, but better
known by his picturesque Chinese nickname of the Blind White Devil. < I have a sketch of the Blind White Devil leaning on the bar; on the next page, taken the same hour, a jotting of Black Tom threatening a whole crowd of customers with a long Smith-and-Wesson: to such heights and depths we rose and fell *׳* / ׳
Of our visitors, I believe I preferred Emperor Norton < < < Where else would a harmless madman who supposed himself emperor of the two Americas have been fostered and encouraged / *׳* ׳ bankers and merchants have received his visits, cashed his checks, submitted to his small assessments *׳ * / been suffered to attend and address the exhibition days of schools and colleges? where else, in God’s green earth, have taken his pick of restaurants, ransacked the bill of fare, and departed scathless? They tell me he was even an exacting patron, threatening to withdraw his custom when dissatisfied; and I can well believe it, for his face wore an expres-sion distincitly gastronomical. Jim had received from this monarch a cabinet appointment at the head either of foreign affairs or education
׳ at a comparatively early date I saw him in the exercise of his public funcitions. His Majesty entered the office '*a portly, rather flabby man, with the face of a gentleman, rendered unspeak׳ ably pathetic and absurd by the great sabre at his side and the peacocks feather in his hat.
”1 have called to remind you, Mr. Pinkerton, that you are somewhat in arrear of taxes,” he said, with oldffashioned, stately courtesy.
"Well, Your Majesty, what is the amount?” asked Jim; and when the figure was named [it was generally two or three dollars], paid upon the nail and offered a bonus in the shape of a bottle of Thirteen Star [brandy].
"I am always delighted to patronize native industries,” said Norton the First. "San Fran׳ cisco is very public׳spirited in what concerns its Emperor; and indeed, sir, of all my domains, it is my favorite city.”Here ends the story of the San Francisco that inspired the genius of Robert Louis Stevenson 'With an introduction by Perry Epsten and decorations by W. F. Rauschnabel' Designed and typographed by Haywood H. Hunt and issued from press of The Kennedy'ten Bosch Company' San Francisco California January Mcmxxiii