himself, gathered up the
magazines and papers that had fallen from his lap, and glanced at the
station walls. The old illustrations glanced back at him! He looked at
his watch; he had been asleep just ten minutes!

BOHEMIAN DAYS IN SAN FRANCISCO

It is but just to the respectable memory of San Francisco that in these
vagrant recollections I should deprecate at once any suggestion that the
levity of my title described its dominant tone at any period of my early
experiences. On the contrary, it was a singular fact that while the
rest of California was swayed by an easy, careless unconventionalism, or
swept over by waves of emotion and sentiment, San Francisco preserved
an intensely material and practical attitude, and even a certain austere
morality. I do not, of course, allude to the brief days of '49, when it
was a straggling beach of huts and stranded hulks, but to the earlier
stages of its development into the metropolis of California. Its first
tottering steps in that direction were marked by a distinct gravity and
decorum. Even during the period when the revolver settled small private
difficulties, and Vigilance Committees adjudicated larger public ones,
an unmistakable seriousness and respectability was the ruling sign of
its governing class. It was not improbable that under the reign of the
Committee the lawless and vicious class were more appalled by the moral
spectacle of several thousand black-coated, serious-minded business men
in embattled procession than by mere force of arms, and one "suspect"--a
prize-fighter--is known to have committed suicide in his cell after
confrontation with his grave and passionless shopkeeping judges. Even
that peculiar quality of Californian humor which was apt to mitigate
the extravagances of the revolver and the uncertainties of poker had no
place in the decorous and responsible utterance of San Francisco. The
press was sober, materialistic, practical--when it was not severely
admonitory of existing evil; the few smaller papers that indulged in
levity were considered libelous and improper. Fancy was displaced by
heavy articles on the revenues of the State and inducements to the
investment of capital. Local news was under an implied censorship which
suppressed anything that might tend to discourage timid or cautious
capital. Episodes of romantic lawlessness or pathetic incidents of
mining life were carefully edited--with the comment that these things
belonged to the pas