n and the day's takings in a bag.

What I have here sketched was the routine. But we appealed to the taste
of San Francisco more distinctly in particular fetes. "Ye Olde Time
Pycke-Nycke," largely advertised in hand-bills beginning "Oyez, Oyez!"
and largely frequented by knights, monks, and cavaliers, was drowned out
by unseasonable rain, and returned to the city one of the saddest
spectacles I ever remember to have witnessed. In pleasing contrast, and
certainly our chief success, was "The Gathering of the Clans," or
Scottish picnic. So many milk-white knees were never before
simultaneously exhibited in public, and, to judge by the prevalence of
"Royal Stewart" and the number of eagles' feathers, we were a high-born
company. I threw forward the Scottish flank of my own ancestry, and
passed muster as a clansman with applause. There was, indeed, but one
small cloud on this red-letter day. I had laid in a large supply of the
national beverage in the shape of the "Rob Roy MacGregor O' Blend,
Warranted Old and Vatted"; and this must certainly have been a generous
spirit, for I had some anxious work between four and half-past,
conveying on board the inanimate forms of chieftains.

To one of our ordinary festivities, where he was the life and soul of
his own mess, Pinkerton himself came incognito, bringing the algebraist
on his arm. Miss Mamie proved to be a well-enough-looking mouse, with a
large limpid eye, very good manners, and a flow of the most correct
expressions I have ever heard upon the human lip. As Pinkerton's
incognito was strict, I had little opportunity to cultivate the lady's
acquaintance, but I was informed afterwards that she considered me "the
wittiest gentleman she had ever met." "The Lord mend your taste in wit!"
thought I; but I cannot conceal that such was the general impression.
One of my pleasantries even went the round of San Francisco, and I have
heard it (myself all unknown) bandied in saloons. To be unknown began at
last to be a rare experience; a bustle woke upon my passage, above all,
in humble neighbourhoods. "Who's that?" one would ask, and the other
would cry, "That! why, Dromedary Dodd!" or, with withering scorn, "Not
know Mr. Dodd of the picnics? Well!" and, indeed, I think it marked a
rather barren destiny; for our picnics, if a trifle vulgar, were as gay
and innocent as the age of gold. I am sure no people divert themselves
so easily and so well, and even with the cares of my stewardship I