The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Ward of the Golden Gate, by Bret Harte

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Title: A Ward of the Golden Gate

Author: Bret Harte

Posting Date: October 28, 2008 [EBook #2193]
Release Date: May, 2000

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE ***

A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE

by

Bret Harte

JTABLE 5 9 1

PROLOGUE.

In San Francisco the "rainy season" had been making itself a reality to
the wondering Eastern immigrant. There were short days of drifting
clouds and flying sunshine, and long succeeding nights of incessant
downpour, when the rain rattled on the thin shingles or drummed on the
resounding zinc of pioneer roofs. The shifting sand-dunes on the
outskirts were beaten motionless and sodden by the onslaught of
consecutive storms; the southeast trades brought the saline breath of
the outlying Pacific even to the busy haunts of Commercial and Kearney
streets; the low-lying Mission road was a quagmire; along the City
Front, despite of piles and pier and wharf, the Pacific tides still
asserted themselves in mud and ooze as far as Sansome Street; the
wooden sidewalks of Clay and Montgomery streets were mere floating
bridges or buoyant pontoons superposed on elastic bogs; Battery Street
was the Silurian beach of that early period on which tin cans,
packing-boxes, freight, household furniture, and even the runaway crews
of deserted ships had been cast away. There were dangerous and unknown
depths in Montgomery Street and on the Plaza, and the wheels of a
passing carriage hopelessly mired had to be lifted by the volunteer
hands of a half dozen high-booted wayfarers, whose wearers were
sufficiently content to believe that a woman, a child, or an invalid
was behind its closed windows, without troubling themselves or the
occupant by looking through the glass.

It was a carriage that, thus released, eventually drew up before the
superior public edifice known as the City Hall. From it a woman,
closely veiled, alighted, and quickly entered the building. A few
passers-by turned to look at her, partly from the rarity of the female
figure at that period, and part