g and had caused much
discussion pro and con. But now it was almost completed and a matter of
much civic pride. Large ships, anchored at its terminus, were
discharging cargo, and thither Benito bent his course, head bent, hat
pulled well down on his forehead, until a rousing slap on the back spun
him around almost angrily. He looked into the wise and smiling eyes of
Edward C. Kemble.

"Well, lad," the editor of the _Californian Star_ accosted, "I hear
you've been to San Jose. What's new up there, if I may ask you?"

"Very little ... nothing," said Benito, adding, "save the talk of gold
at Marshall's mill."

"Pooh!" exclaimed the editor. "Marshall's mill, and Mormon island! One
would think the famous fairy tale of El Dorado had come true."

"You place no credence in it, then?" asked Benito, disappointed.

"Not I," said Kemble. "See here," he struck one fist into the palm of
another. "All such balderdash is bad for San Francisco. We're trying to
get ahead, grow, be a city. Look at the work going on. That means
progress, sustained stimulus. And along come these stories of gold
finds. It's the wrong time. The wrong time, I tell you. It'll interfere.
If we get folks excited they'll pull out for the hills, the wilderness.
Everything'll stop here.... Then, bye and bye, they'll come
back--busted! Mark my words, BUSTED! Is that business? No."

He went off shaking his head sagely. Benito puzzled, half resentful,
gazed after him. He abandoned the walk to the dock and returned with
low-spirited resignation to his tasks at Ward & Smith's store.

* * * * *

For several months gold rumors continued to come. Citizens, fearing
ridicule, perhaps, slipped unobtrusively out of town, to test their
truth. Kemble was back from a trip to the so-called gold fields.
Editorially, he made sport of his findings. He had seen feather-brained
fortune-seekers gambling hopelessly with fate, suffering untold
hardships for half the pay they could have gained from "honest labor."

Now and then a miner, dirty and disheveled, came in ragged clothes to
gamble or drink away the contents of a pouch of "dust." It was at first
received suspiciously. Barkeepers took "a pinch for a drink," meaning
what they could grasp with their fingers, and one huge-fisted man
estimated that this method netted him three dollars per glass.

San Francisco awoke to a famine in butcher-knives, pans and candles.
Knives at first were used to go