PAVEMENT PICTURES

We had been but a few days in San Francisco when a new-found friend, scarcely my senior, but who was a comparatively old settler, took me by the hand and led me forth to view the town. He was my neighbor, and a right good fellow, with the surprising composure-for one of his years-that is so early, so easily, and so naturally acquired by those living in camps and border-lands.

We descended Telegraph Hill by Dupont Street as far as Pacific Street. So steep was the way that, at intervals, the modern fire-escape would have been a welcome aid to our progress. Sidewalks, always of plank and often not broader than two boards placed longitudinally, led on to steps that plunged headlong from one terrace to another. From the veranda of one house one might have leaped to the roof of the house just below-if so disposed,-for the houses seemed to be set one upon another, so acute was the angle of their base-line. The town stood on end just there, and at the foot of it was a foreign quarter.

In those days there were at least four foreign quarters-Spanish, French, Italian, and Chinese. We knew the Spanish Quarter at the foot of the hill by the human types that inhabited it; by the balconies like hanging gardens, clamorous with parrots; and by the dark-eyed senoritas, with lace mantillas drawn over their blue-black hair; by the shop windows filled with Mexican pottery; the long strings of cardinal-red peppers that swung under the awnings over the doors of the sellers of spicy things; and also by the delicious odors that were wafted to us from the tables where Mexicans, Spaniards, Chilians, Peruvians, and Hispano-Americans were discussing the steaming tamal, the fragrant frijol, and other fiery dishes that might put to the blush the ineffectual pepper-pot.

Everywhere we heard the most mellifluous of languages-the “lovely lingo,” we used to call it; everywhere we saw the people of the quarter lounging in doorways or windows or on galleries, dressed as if they were about to appear in a rendition of the opera of “The Barber of Seville,” or at a fancy-dress ball. Figaros were on every hand, and Rosinas and Dons of all degrees. At times a magnificent Caballero dashed by on a half-tamed bronco. He rode in the shade of a sombrero a yard wide, crusted with silver embroidery. His Mexican saddle was embossed with huge Mexican dollars; his jacket as gaily ornamented as a bull-fighter’s; his trousers open from the hip, and with a chain of silver buttons down their flapping hems; his spurs, huge wheels with murderous spikes, were fringed with little bells that jangled as he rode,-and this to the accompaniment of much strumming of guitars and the incense of cigarros.

Near the Spanish Quarter ran the Barbary Coast. There were the dives beneath the pavement, where it was not wise to enter; blood was on those thresholds, and within hovered the shadow of death. Beyond, we entered Chinatown, as rare a bit of old China as is to be found without the Great Wall itself. Chinatown has grown amazingly within the last forty years, but it has in reality gained little in interest. There is more of it: that is the only difference; and what there is of it is more difficult of approach. The Joss House, the theatre, with its great original “continuous performance”-its tragedy half a year in length,-flourished there. The glittering, spectacular restaurant was wide open to the public, and so was everything else. That fact made all the difference between Chinatown in the Fifties and Chinatown forty years later.

My companion and I tarried long on Dupont Street, between Pacific and Sacramento Streets. The shops were like peep shows on a larger scale. How bright they were! how gay with color! how rich with carvings and curios. Each was like a set-scene on the stage. The shopkeepers and their aids were like actors in a play. They seemed really to be playing and not trying to engage in any serious business. Surely it would have been quite beneath the dignity of such distinguished gentlemen to take the smallest interest in the affairs of trade. They were clad in silks and satins and furs of great value; they had a little finger-nail as long as a slice of quill pen; they had tea on tables of carved teak; and they had impossible pipes that breathed unspeakable odors. They wore bracelets of priceless jade. They had private boxes, which hung from the ceiling and looked like cages for some unclassified bird; and they could go up into those boxes when life at the tea-table became tiresome, and get quite another point of view. There they could look down upon the world of traffic that never did anything in their shops, as far as we could see; and, still murmuring to themselves in a tongue that sounds untranslatable and a voice that was never known to rise above a stage whisper, they could at one and the same moment regard with scorn the Christian, keep an eye on the cash-boy, and make perfect pictures of themselves.

In some parts of that strange street, where everybody was very busy but apparently never accomplished anything, there were no fronts to the rooms on the groundfloor. If those rooms were ever closed-it seemed to me they never were,-some one kindly put up a long row of shutters, and that end was accomplished. When the shutters were down the whole place was wide open, and anybody, everybody, could enter and depart at his own sweet will. This is exactly what he did; we did it ourselves, but we didn’t know why we did it. The others seemed to know all about it.

There was a long table in the centre of each room; it was always surrounded by swarms of Chinamen. Not a few foreigners of various nationalities were there. They were all intensely interested in some game that was being played upon that table. We heard the “chink” of money; and as the players came and went some were glad and some were sad and some were mad. These were the gambling halls of Chinatown. They were not at all beautiful or alluring to the eye, but they cast a spell over the minds and the pockets of men that was irresistible. Nowadays the place is kept under lock and key, and you must give the countersign or you will be turned away from the door thereof by a Chinaman whose face is the image of injured innocence.

The authors of the annals of San Francisco, 1854, say:

“During 1853, most of the moral, intellectual, and social characteristics of the inhabitants of San Francisco were nearly as already described in the reviews of previous years. There was still the old reckless energy, the old love of pleasure, the fast making and fast spending of money; the old hard labor and wild delights; jobberies, official and political corruption; thefts, robberies, and violent assaults; murders, duels and suicides; gambling, drinking, and general extravagance and dissipation.... The people had wealth at command, and all the passions of youth were burning within them; and they often, therefore, outraged public decency. Yet somehow the oldest residenters and the very family-men loved the place, with all its brave wickedness and splendid folly.”

I can testify that the town knew little or no change in the two years that followed. The “El Dorado” on the plaza, and the “Arcade” and “Polka” on Commercial Street, were still in full blast. How came I aware of that fact? I was a child; my guide, philosopher and friend was a child, and we were both as innocent as children should be. It is written, “Children and fools speak the truth.” I may add, “Children and ‘fools rush in where angels fear to tread.’” The doors of “El Dorado,” of the “Arcade,” and the “Polka” were ever open to the public. We saw from the sidewalk gaily-decorated interiors; we heard enchanting music, and there seemed to be a vast deal of jollity within. No one tried to prevent our entering; we merely followed the others; and, indeed, it was all a mystery to us. Cards were being dealt at the faro tables, and dealt by beautiful women in bewildering attire. They also turned the wheels of fortune or misfortune, and threw dice, and were skilled in all the arts that beguile and betray the innocent. The town was filled with such resorts; some were devoted to the patronage of the more exclusive set; many were traps into which the miner from the mountain gulches fell and where he soon lost his bag of “dust,”-his whole fortune, for which he had been so long and so wearily toiling. There he was shoulder to shoulder with the greaser and the lascar, the “shoulder-striker” and the hoodlum; and they were all busy with monte, faro, rondo, and rouge-et-noir.

There was no limit to the gambling in those days. There was no question of age or color or sex: opportunity lay in wait for inclination at the street corners and in the highways and the byways. The wonder is that there were not more victims driven to madness or suicide.

The pictures were not all so gloomy. Six times San Francisco was devastated by fire, and all within two years-or, to speak accurately, within eighteen months. Many millions were lost; many enterprising and successful citizens were in a few hours rendered penniless. Some were again and again “burned out”; but they seemed to spring like the famed bird, who shall for once be nameless, from their own ashes.

It became evident that an efficient fire department was an immediate and imperative necessity. The best men of the city-men prominent in every trade, calling and profession-volunteered their services, and headed a subscription list that swelled at once into the thousands. Perhaps there never was a finer volunteer fire department than that which was for many years the pride and glory of San Francisco. On the Fourth of July it was the star feature of the procession; and it paraded most of the streets that were level enough for wheels to run on-and when the mud was navigable, for they turned out even in the rainy season on days of civic festivity. Their engines and hose carts and hook and ladder trucks were so lavishly ornamented with flowers, banners, streamers, and even pet eagles, dogs, and other mascots, that they might without hesitation have engaged in any floral battle on any Riviera and been sure of victory.

The magnificence of the silver trumpets and the quantity and splendor of the silver trappings of those fire companies pass all belief. It begins to seem to me now, as I write, that I must have dreamed it,-it was all so much too fine for any ordinary use. But I know that I did not dream it; that there was never anything truer or better or more efficient anywhere under the sun than the San Francisco fire department in the brave days of old. Representatives of almost every nation on earth could testify to this, and did repeatedly testify to it in almost every language known to the human tongue; for there never was a more cosmical commonwealth than sprang out of chaos on that Pacific coast; and there never was a city less given to following in the footsteps of its elder and more experienced sisters. Nor was there ever a more spontaneous outburst of happy-go-luckiness than that which made of young San Francisco a very Babel and a bouncing baby Babylon.