nd; they must needs adapt themselves to the
angle of demarkation; they loomed above their front-yards while their
back-yards lorded it over their roofs. Indeed they were usually
approached by ascending or descending stairways, or perchance by airy
bridges that spanned little gullies where ran rivulets in the winter
season; and they were a trifle dangerous to encounter after dark. There
were parrots on perches at the doorways of those cottages; and
song-birds in cages that were hidden away in vines. There were pet
poodles there. I think there were more lap-dogs than watch-dogs in that
early California.

And there were pleasant people within those hanging gardens,--people who
seemed to have drifted there and were living their lyrical if lonely
lives in semi-solitude on islands in the air. I always envied them. I
was sorry that we were housed like other folk, and fronted on a street
than which nothing could have been more commonplace or less interesting.
Its one redeeming feature in my eyes was its uncompromising steepness;
nothing that ran on wheels ever ran that way, but toiled painfully to
the top, tacking from side to side, forever and forever, all the way
up.

Weary were the beasts of burden that ascended that hill of difficulty.
There was the itinerant marketer, with his overladen cart, and his white
horse, very much winded. He was a Yorkshire man, and he cried with a
loud voice his appetizing wares: "Cabbage, taters, onions, wild duck,
wild goose!" Well do I remember the refrain. Probably there were few
domestic fowls in the market then; moreover, even our drinking water was
peddled about the streets and sold to us by the huge pailful.

The goats knew Saturday and Sunday by heart. Every Saturday we lads were
busier than bees. We had at intervals during the week collected what
empty tin cans we might have chanced upon, and you may be sure they were
not a few. The markets of California, in early times, were stocked with
canned goods. Flour came to us in large cans; probably the barrel would
not have been proof against mould during the long voyage around the
Horn. Everything eatable--I had almost said and drinkable--we had in
cans; and these cans when emptied were cast into the rubbish heap and
finally consigned to the dump-cart.

We boys all became smelters, and for a very good reason. There was a
market for soft solder; we could dispose of it without difficulty; we
could in this way put money in our purse and exp