Part 8 (1/2)
So late as 1860 it was often said that there were busy men in San Francisco who had never taken a day's vacation, or even left the city to cross the Bay, from the hour of their arrival in 1849 until that moment.
Even this record has been eclipsed. A Pioneer of German birth, named Henry Miller, who acc.u.mulated a fortune of six million dollars, is said to have lived, or at least to have existed, in San Francisco for thirty-five years without taking a single day's vacation.
It was even a.s.serted at first that the climate neutralized the effect of intoxicating liquor, and that it was difficult, if not impossible, to get really drunk in California. Possibly a somewhat lax definition of drunkenness accounted in part for this theory. A witness once testified in a San Francisco court that he did not consider a man to be drunk so long as he could move. But the crowning excellence of the California climate remains to be stated. It was observed by the Pioneers,--and they had ample opportunity to make observations upon the subject,--that in that benign atmosphere gunshot wounds healed rapidly.
With a climate exhilarating and curative; with youth, health, courage, and the prospect of almost immediate wealth; with new and exciting surroundings, it is no wonder that the Pioneers enjoyed their hour. In San Francisco, especially, a kind of pleasant madness seized upon every newcomer. ”As each man steps his foot on sh.o.r.e,” writes one adventurer, ”he seems to have entered a magic circle in which he is under the influence of new impulses.” And another, in a letter to a friend says, ”As soon as you reach California you will think every one is crazy; and without great caution, you will be crazy yourself.”
Still another Pioneer wrote home even more emphatically on this point: ”You can form no conception of the state of affairs here. I do believe, in my soul, everybody has gone mad,--stark, staring mad.”[40]
To the same effect is the narrative of Stephen J. Field, afterward, and for many years, a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Mr.
Field, who arrived in San Francisco as a very young man, thus describes his first experience:--
”As I walked along the streets, I met a great many persons whom I had known in New York, and they all seemed to be in the highest spirits. Every one in greeting me said, 'It is a glorious country!' or 'Isn't it a glorious country?' or 'Did you ever see a more glorious country?' In every case the word 'glorious' was sure to come out.... I caught the infection, and though I had but a single dollar in my pocket, no business whatever, and did not know where I was to get my next meal, I found myself saying to everybody I met, 'It is a glorious country!'”[41]
”The exuberance of my spirits,” Judge Field continues, ”was marvellous”; and the readers of his interesting reminiscences will not be inclined to dispute the fact when they learn that four days after his arrival, having made the sum of twenty dollars by selling a few New York newspapers, he forthwith put down his name for sixty-five thousand dollars' worth of town lots, and received the consideration due to a capitalist bent upon developing the resources of a new country.
The most extravagant acts appeared reasonable under the new dispensation.
n.o.body was surprised when an enthusiastic miner offered to bet a friend that the latter could not hit him with a shotgun at the distance of seventy-eight yards. As a result the miner received five shots, causing severe wounds, beside losing the bet, which amounted to four drinks. After the first State election, a magistrate holding an important office fulfilled a wager by carrying the winner a distance of three miles in a wheelbarrow.
A characteristic scene in a Chinese restaurant is described as follows in the ”Sacramento Transcript” of October 8, 1850:--
”One young man called for a plate of mutton chops, and the waiter, not understanding, asked for a repet.i.tion of the order.
”'Mutton chops, you chuckle head,' said the young gentleman.
”'Mutton chops, you chuckle head,' shouted the Chinaman to the kitchen.
”The joke took among the customers, and presently one of them called out, 'A gla.s.s of pigeon milk, you long-tailed Asiatic.'
”'A gla.s.s of pigeon milk, you long-tailed satic,' echoed the waiter.
”'A barrel of h.o.m.oeopathic soup, old smooth head,' shouted another.
”'Arrel homepatty soup, you old smooth head,' echoed the waiter.
”'A hatful of bricks,' shouted a fourth.
”'Hatter bricks,' repeated the waiter.
”By this time the kitchen was in a perfect state of confusion, and the proprietor in a stew of perplexity rushed into the dining-room. 'What you mean by pigeon milk, homepatty soup, and de brick? How you cooking, gentlemen?'
”A roar burst from the tables, and the shrewd Asiatic saw in a moment that they were hoaxing his subordinates. 'The gentlemen make you all dam fools,' said he, rus.h.i.+ng again into the smoky recess of the kitchen.”
At a dinner given in San Francisco a local orator thus discoursed upon the glories of California: ”Look at its forest trees, varying from three hundred to one thousand feet in height, with their trunks so close together [drawing his knife and pantomiming] that you can't stick this bowie-knife between them; and the lordly elk, with antlers from seventeen to twenty feet spread, with their heads and tails up, ambling through these grand forests. It's a sight, gentlemen”--
”Stop,” cried a newcomer who had not yet been inoculated with the atmosphere. ”My friend, if the trees are so close together, how does the elk get through the woods with his wide-branching horns?”
The Californian turned on the stranger with a look of thorough contempt and replied, ”That's the elk's business”; and continued his unvarnished tale, no more embarra.s.sed than the sun at noonday.
”There was a spirit of off-hand, jolly fun in those days, a sort of universal free and easy cheerfulness.... The California Pioneer that could not give and take a joke was just no Californian at all. It was this spirit that gives the memory of those days an indescribable fascination and charm.”[42]