nd on help was
more. But the mental side underlying was the worst, for the iron
entered into my soul. I lost energy. I went dreaming. I was divorced
from humanity.

America is a hard place, for it has been made by hard men. People who
would not be crushed in the East have gone to the West. The Puritan
element has little softness in it, and in some places even now gives
rise to phenomena of an excessive and religious brutality which tortures
without pity, without sympathy. But not only is the Puritan hard; all
other elements in America are hard too. The rougher emigrant, the
unconquerable rebel, the natural adventurer, the desperado seeking a
lawless realm, men who were iron and men with the fierce courage which
carries its vices with its virtues, have made the United States. The
rude individualist of Europe who felt the slow pressure of social atoms
which precedes their welding, the beginning of socialism, is the father
of America. He has little pity, little tolerance, little charity. In
what States in America is there any poor law? Only an emigration agent,
hungry for steamship percentages, will declare there are no poor there
now. The survival of the fit is the survival of the strong; every man
for himself and the devil take the hindmost might replace the legend on
the silver dollar and the golden eagle, without any American denying it
in his heart.

But if America as a whole is the dumping ground and Eldorado combined of
the harder extruded elements of Europe, the same law of selection holds
good there as well. With every degree of West longitude the fibre of the
American grows harder. The Dustman Destiny sifting his cinders has his
biggest mesh over the Pacific States. If charity and sympathy be to seek
in the East, it is at a greater discount on the Slope. The only
poor-house is the House of Correction. Perhaps San Francisco is one of
the hardest, if not _the_ hardest city in the world. Speaking from my
own experience, and out of the experience gathered from a thousand
miserable bedfellows in the streets, I can say I think it is, not even
excepting Portland in Oregon. But let it be borne in mind that this is
the verdict of the unsuccessful. Had I been lucky it might have seemed
different.

I came into the city with a quarter of a dollar, two bits, or one
shilling and a halfpenny in my possession. Starvation and sleeping on
boards when I was by no means well broke me down and at the same time
embittered me. On t