ce called myself, The Amateur Parisian, I grew (or
declined) into a waterside prowler, a lingerer on wharves, a frequenter
of shy neighbourhoods, a scraper of acquaintance with eccentric
characters. I visited Chinese and Mexican gambling-hells, German secret
societies, sailors' boarding-houses, and "dives" of every complexion 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 upon 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 upon the readiest method of burning San
Francisco 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 the manufacturers who were to grace it with their
dangling bodies, and read aloud to the delighted multitude a telegram of
adhesion from a member of the State legislature: all 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 millionnaire, philosophy tried to tell
me that this sight was truly the more picturesque. In a thousand towns
and different epochs I might have had occasion to behold the cowardice
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?

Minora Canamus. This historic figure stalks silently through a corner
of the San Francisco of my memory: the rest is bric-a-brac, the
reminiscences of a vagrant sketcher. My delight was much in slums.
Little Italy was a haunt of mine; there I would look in at the windows
of small eating-shops, transported bodily from Genoa or Naples, with
their macaroni, and chianti flasks, and portraits of Garibaldi, and