nt. These had yielded
distinct traces of gold. San Francisco stopped laughing, and that
portion of it which had roofs in the neighborhood at once began
prospecting. Claims were staked out on these airy placers, and my
cousin's roof, being the very next one to the chimney, and presumably
"in the lead," was disposed of to a speculative company for a
considerable sum. I remember my cousin telling me the story--for the
occurrence was quite recent--and taking me with him to the roof to
explain it, but I am afraid I was more attracted by the mystery of the
closely guarded building, and the strangely tinted smoke which arose
from this temple where money was actually being "made," than by anything
else. Nor did I dream as I stood there--a very lanky, open-mouthed
youth--that only three or four years later I should be the secretary of
its superintendent. In my more adventurous ambition I am afraid I would
have accepted the suggestion half-heartedly. Merely to have helped to
stamp the gold which other people had adventurously found was by no
means a part of my youthful dreams.

At the time of these earlier impressions the Chinese had not yet become
the recognized factors in the domestic and business economy of the city
which they had come to be when I returned from the mines three years
later. Yet they were even then a more remarkable and picturesque
contrast to the bustling, breathless, and brand-new life of San
Francisco than the Spaniard. The latter seldom flaunted his faded
dignity in the principal thoroughfares. "John" was to be met everywhere.
It was a common thing to see a long file of sampan coolies carrying
their baskets slung between them, on poles, jostling a modern,
well-dressed crowd in Montgomery Street, or to get a whiff of their
burned punk in the side streets; while the road leading to their
temporary burial-ground at Lone Mountain was littered with slips of
colored paper scattered from their funerals. They brought an atmosphere
of the Arabian Nights into the hard, modern civilization; their
shops--not always confined at that time to a Chinese quarter--were
replicas of the bazaars of Canton and Peking, with their quaint display
of little dishes on which tidbits of food delicacies were exposed for
sale, all of the dimensions and unreality of a doll's kitchen or a
child's housekeeping.

They were a revelation to the Eastern immigrant, whose preconceived
ideas of them were borrowed from the ballet or pantomime; th