The Fantastic City

City and state elections were especially exciting when our friends ran for office, and we electioneered for them in the feminine manner of the day, with discreet suggestions to tradesmen that Mr. Selby or Mr. Otis would make a far better mayor than his opponent. I was among enthusiasts thus electioneering for Senator Weller when he ran for Governor in '57, and was one of those who planned to make the inaugural ball at Sacramento an unusually grand affair. Vain plans they proved. It was, spectacularly at least, a dismal failure. Guests danced in their wraps, all their brave array hidden beneath evening cloaks and top-coats. It was in January, '58, one of the rare cold Januarys of those old winters, and the ballroom in a Sacramento theater, with stage extended over orchestra and parquet, had no provision whatever for heating. We shivered through the Grand March, and then there was a rush for dressing-rooms to retrieve wraps. Lumpy-looking dolmans and long fur-lined capes revolved heavily on the crowded floor. Still, it had a certain terpsichorean significance, this chilly ball, since it served to introduce the Lancers to California.

This innovation we planned on the steamer going up from San Francisco — the New World it was, which left the city at 4 P.M. and was due at Sacramento at midnight, taking a contingent of San Francisco guests for the ball the following night. Soon after we turned from the bay into the Sacramento River, the New World struck a sandbar known as the Hog's Back, and there we were stranded until tides turned in the morning. No staterooms for sleep. To pass the time we danced on deck.

In London I had danced the Lancers, a spirited improvement on the old quadrille, and Peter Naylor had learned it in New York. We evolved the idea of teaching others in our party, and introducing the new dance at the Inaugural Ball. So while Billy Botts whistled 'Money Musk' and called figures, we balanced to the right, swung our partners, and all chassez-ed on the deck of the New World, in the Sacramento River. That night in Sacramento, when we formed a hollow square and went through the maneuvers, we stopped the ball.

One of the applauding spectators was Colonel Joe Hooker with whom I danced several times. A handsome man he was, who looked like Lord Cardigan, tall and soldierly. But heroic figures alone do not make great soldiers, and conversely, as Farragut, Grant, and Sherman among so many others, have proved. Colonel Hooker's score in the Civil War, beside theirs, was very low, something like zero, I think. In the fifties he lived on a ranch beyond Sacramento, where he entertained at elaborate fiestas in the Spanish manner. Wild parties, some of them were, although distinguished visitors in California were often his guests, as they were at General Frémont's ranch, 'La Mariposa,' beyond Stockton, where Mrs. Frémont and her little girl lived in the fifties. But here the hospitality was quiet and charming.

A great world event occurred in this year of 1858, the laying of the Atlantic cable. When the first message flashed under the sea between America and England, the people of two continents thrilled to the miracle. We thrilled nearly a month late, of course, but San Francisco at once declared a holiday, and Judge Shafter said, 'It is doubtless the greatest news the globe has heard since it was announced that "To Castile and Aragon, Columbus has given a new world."' That was the way we felt about it.

The Panama steamer Sonora brought the news. We had heard that summer of failures when the cable parted under the ocean, and knew that a third attempt to lay it would be made in August. As the Sonora drew near her dock one day in September, some one shouted from the deck, 'The Atlantic cable is laid!' and soon the whole city knew it. With awe we read the pious words which had opened the service on August 17, 1858: 'Europe and America are united by telegraph. Glory to God in the Highest; on earth, peace and good will toward men.' Since then the human race has grown more accustomed to miracles. Few people stop to glorify God for one, or even to remark the human courage and patient concentration of men who accomplish it.

We celebrated with flying flags, streamers of colored bunting, and a grand parade in which military companies, civic dignitaries, firemen, mercantile organizations, and all the foreign consuls participated.

We were in the gay company that viewed the procession from the windows of the French Consulate in Stockton Street, where we were guests of Madame Gautier, wife of the Consul. When it was over, gentlemen of the party who had been passing in review joined us, and we drank toasts to President Buchanan, to Queen Victoria, to the Atlantic cable, and the countries of all the consuls.

In a notebook of 1859 is listed for March 3, 'Launching of the Toucey at Mare Island.' The Toucey, soon to be rechristened the Saginaw, was the first ship built at the Navy Yard, and her launching was a great occasion. Excursion boats went from San Francisco with flying flags, bands, and festive crowds dancing all the way up the bay. We were guests of Captain Alden on the Active. Soon after this he was ordered East and departed with his quaint little wife, but Captain Richard Cuyler who succeeded him was an equally indefatigable host, forever arranging parties. The Army and Navy contributed generously to the gayety of our city — a sparkling froth that covered much important and distinguished service.

Captain and Mrs. Farragut had gone to Washington, and Captain Cunningham, new commandant at the Yard, was our host at the launching. His little daughter, Mollie, christened the Toucey, and after a collation at the Cunningham house, we danced in the sailmakers' loft — long used for hops at Mare Island — until a signal gun announced that boats were ready to depart; and the gay fleet sailed down the bay. Collations were feasts of cold delicacies, baked hams, roast fowl, and such things, with sweets and champagne. Any such spread was called a collation, whether served at noon or midnight.

That summer, Edgar Mills decided to tour the world, and fired two of his friends with a like ambition. Joseph Donahoe and John Y. Hallock arranged to go with him. The three musketeers took passage on the clipper ship Storm King bound for the Orient, and planned a party which facilitated the enthusiastic farewells of their friends — enthusiastic over the great adventure of a world tour.

On the day of their departure, they chartered the little steamer Surprise and invited a happy company to a champagne lunch on board. We steamed about the bay while the Storm King lay at anchor off Fort Point, and toward sundown we drew near her. She sent a small boat over to us and Edgar Mills and his friends left in a confusion of cheers, waving hats and handkerchiefs. As the Storm King sailed majestically through the Golden Gate with her canvas spread, the sunset gun on Alcatraz sounded a last farewell. I seem to recall that they all came home from Honolulu, but it may have been only one of them.

Excursions on the bay were popular for years — water frolics the Southerners called them: the bay was so inviting with its island hills and many inlets, and there was so little driving then on the peninsula. The Swiss Consul, Monsieur Berton, gave a party on a revenue cutter and introduced the novelty of fishing for rock cod; and Colonel and Mrs. Swords, who lived at the Oriental, commandeered the Active for another water frolic. He was chief quartermaster of the Department of the Pacific, where I always thought his name was wasted. A Colonel Swords should have been an officer of cavalry.

In a later time Albert Bierstadt, the painter, revived the water frolic for a party in honor of the visiting Duke of Manchester. We stopped at Lime Point that day to inspect the lighthouse and the Duke climbed the fragile stairway up the cliff, arriving breathless, but still affable, at the top.

Among invitation cards yellow with age, I still have one to a ball at the Presidio in 1859. It was given to mark the tenth anniversary of the establishment of the United States Army Post on the old Spanish reservation, and was a handsome affair—we referred to 'handsome affairs 'in 'genteel' society, then. The Officers' Club at the post was the ballroom, a low adobe building facing the parade ground, which had been built by the Spanish comandante in 1776, with walls so thick that window-frames made broad, comfortable seats; still do, no doubt, since the old building still stands. It was bright with flags, glittering uniforms, and lovely gowns, and the flowers that bloomed in profusion in Presidio gardens.

The Plaza was festive that night, for there we gathered in all our finery to take omnibuses for the long drive over sand dunes to the post. We arrived at the Plaza in non-descript hacks or on foot, to pile into waiting army carry-alls, with our flaring skirts, fans, and bouquets, all to the vast entertainment of loiterers along Kearney Street.

The invitation reads:

N.B. Omnibuses will leave the Plaza for the Barracks at 8½ and at 9 P.M.

Of our hosts, Lieutenant Custis Lee was a son of General Robert E. Lee, of Virginia, and was then aide to General Clarke, Commandant of the Department of California. Lieutenant Gibson was everybody's favorite. He was known as 'Little Gibson' and his blithe good-nature was unfailing. Afterward he was prominent in official life at Washington, and he died there in 1924, in his ninety-seventh year. When I heard of his death, I wished we might have met in recent years to recall these long-ago times.

Lieutenant McPherson became Brigadier-General of Volunteers in the Civil War and was killed in the Battle of the Wilderness. He was full of fun and almost as popular as 'Little Gibson.' Lafayette Hammond was one of our South Park beaux, a Virginian, tall, and dark as a Spaniard. He was a close friend of Custis Lee, and was included among the hosts to welcome guests who might be strangers to the officers. Mrs. C. C. Keeney received with them, and 'every one' was there.

The clans gathered from Stockton Street, South Park, and Rincon Hill for the Mount Vernon Ball on June 1 of that gay year. It was the first entertainment of the sort given in the new country, a brilliant, semi-public affair, at which boxes were filled with the city's wealth and beauty, and the Grand March was a pageant of fashion. Mrs. William Blanding was Vice—Regent of the Mount Vernon Association in San Francisco. Her husband was a lawyer, one of the South Carolina Blandings, which I fancy gave him equal rank with Pinckneys and Izards; and she had a very becoming hauteur. Her aides were Mrs. Louis McLean, of the Baltimore McLeans; Mrs. Harrison Randolph, of Virginia; Mrs. Vandewater, and Miss Sarah Haight.

Possibly I should explain that we were interested in purchasing Mount Vernon from the first President's nephew, John Washington, to make it a national shrine. The Mount Vernon Association of American women, with chapters in all large cities of the country, was formed for this purpose. Our ball was a contributory detail in raising the necessary funds. We voted down Apollo Hall for this grand event, and decided on the American Theater, where the stage was built out over orchestra and parquet for a dancing-floor. The sartorial display that evening was long discussed.

With us were Mr. and Mrs. Hart and their daughter, Mrs. Carnegie, who had come from Australia to build an English country house out near Mission Dolores. Mrs. Carnegie was a pretty young widow who soon married Captain Stevenson, a gallant and distinguished gentleman who had brought the first regiment of United States Volunteers around the Horn. To the end of his very long life he wore his captain's cap covered with black oilcloth above the visor, a high black satin stock and long-tailed coat. For sixty years he was a quaint, revered figure in the San Francisco Pageant.

The Stevensons went to live on Nob Hill, where they gave innumerable parties that added to the gayety of a gay and carefree period. But I remember a dark day of these sunlit years when the city was plunged into grief. It was the 13th of September, 1859, when news that Senator Broderick had been fatally shot in a duel with Judge Terry spread a heavy wave of depression. It came without warning. The meeting had been secretly arranged, climax to a bitter political quarrel over Broderick's reëlection to the Senate. William M. Gwin was his opponent and Terry was Gwin's fiery protagonist — the same tempestuous Terry who had stabbed the man Hopkins in Commercial Street.

The two men met on the lonely shore of Lake Merced, beyond the city's limits, in the early morning gray with fog. Broderick, forced against his will and judgment into the encounter, was ill. He went from a sick-bed to the rendezvous. Terry's shot passed through his lungs. His own shot went wild, deliberately so aimed, many people believed. Duels and killings were not in his philosophy.

They drove him to the home of friends at Fort Mason — a long, rough drive from one end of the peninsula to the other. There he lingered several days. During this time hourly bulletins of his condition were brought into the city by couriers on horseback. Broderick was loved throughout California. His sincerity, with his gift for political leadership, and his zeal for the State's best interests, had won a devoted following. There is no question he had his eyes fixed on high places and reason to believe he would have reached them. It seemed too tragic that it should all needlessly end in the stupid insanity of a duel.

When his death was announced, tears coursed down the faces of men in the streets. They stood about bulletin boards of the newspaper offices in stricken silence, and no one had the heart for business that day. I remember how on the day of his funeral blinds were closed everywhere and buildings were draped in black. In the Plaza, Colonel Baker delivered the funeral oration to thirty thousand people gathered there and in the windows of neighboring buildings. Many followed the cortège to Lone Mountain Cemetery.

Terry had waited in seclusion for news of Broderick's death. When it came, he fled, but was followed and arrested near the Nevada border, to be brought back for trial. His acquittal left him under a cloud which never lifted and finally obscured him. We heard of his going to Texas to fight for the Confederacy in the Civil War, but his return was unmarked. People had fairly forgotten him when in the eighteen eighties he stepped back into the limelight as counsel for the notorious Sarah Althea Hill in a cause célèbre. The lady sued to establish a contract marriage with Senator Sharon, and lost her case. Judge Stephen J. Field decided it against her, and Terry became Field's avowed enemy, an enmity that was to bring about his own death.

The trial was full of sensational details. One I recall was the introduction of a love charm given to Sarah Althea by Mammy Pleasants — or Pleasaunce as it had been in New Orleans. She was one of our figures of mystery, a shrewd old Negress who had made a fortune in mining stocks and gained a neat profit on the side from the sale of love charms to enterprising young ladies desiring the favor of wealthy gentlemen. But her reticence concerning her affairs was complete. She was the despair of cross-examiners.

One saw her picturesque and solitary figure passing through streets of the financial district. She had been born in slavery, but she walked like a duchess, tall and slim. In all the years I saw her, she never varied the style of her costume, a long, full-skirted gown, with kerchief crossed over her bosom and a wide black hat tied over her head, such a costume as she might have worn in New Orleans when she was given her freedom before the war.

Promoting romance and gambling in stocks were mere avocations — Mammy Pleasants was by vocation a housekeeper, and lived at the home of Judge Bell, a huge old house out on Octavia Street surrounded by neglected gardens and veiled in mystery, as baffling as her own.

Not long after the close of the Hill versus Sharon case, the marriage of Judge Terry and his defeated client was announced, to the astonishment of all his friends. The couple went to live in retirement on their ranch near Fresno and it was said, incredibly, to be a happy marriage.

Only once more this brilliant, violent man flashed into the limelight to die spectacularly with his boots on. The final scene was in a restaurant at Lathrop, an eating station on the railroad north of Los Angeles. Judge Field, then one of the Supreme Court in Washington, was making one of his accustomed trips through California with the armed bodyguard who always accompanied him in the territory of his old enemy. They had boarded the train at Los Angeles, unaware that Judge and Mrs. Terry were also passengers. At Lathrop, all passengers alighted to dine, and in the restaurant the two met. Judge Field was already seated when Terry and his wife entered and passed him to go to the far end of the room. There Terry turned to walk back to Field's table, where he stood and glared in silence for a moment, then struck his hand across Field's face. In an instant he fell, shot to death by the guard. Mrs. Terry's lamentations filled the room, and she was taken away a screaming maniac. She died in a hospital for the insane.

Some of the clash and storm of Judge Terry's life seemed to enter the lives of those near him. His law partner, D. W. Perley, was involved in a melodramatic romance that stirred public interest early in the sixties and was remembered of him for years. Its heroine was a young girl named Josie Mansfield, whose mother kept a boarding-house in Sutter Street — the same Josie Mansfield over whom Ed Stokes shot Colonel Jim Fisk in New York in '72. The Perley romance was her début as a heart-breaker. She was very young then, and the attentions of Mr. Perley, who was old enough to be her grandfather, were resented by a stepfather who played the rôle of irate parent. In the middle of melodramatic complications, the heroine eloped with an actor and went to New York, so the curtain was rung down. But when news of the assassination of Fisk, Jay Gould's partner, startled the country, and the opulently beautiful Miss Mansfield took her place in the limelight, the Perley affair was recalled in all its details in San Francisco which took a proprietary interest in the New York tragedy. I remember photographs of Miss Mansfield and the jaunty Colonel Fisk displayed for sale in a Kearney Street window, and have no doubt they found purchasers to acquire and cherish them.

Stokes came to San Francisco after he had served a term in Sing Sing, and for a time in the late seventies was often seen driving his fast trotters on the Cliff House road; but socially he was more or less of an outlaw, although he was still handsome and distinguished-looking; perfectly tailored after the Sing Sing stripes as he had been before them.

Lone Mountain, where Senator Broderick was buried and where so many figures of his generation rest, is a lovely place; a cemetery of sloping lawns, roses, and flowering acacia trees, from where, standing near Senator Latham's bronze tomb, one may look eastward over the city's hills or westward to the Golden Gate. It was a long drive over sand hills from the Plaza in '59, but the cemetery, since called Laurel Hill, lies now in the heart of the residence district. Castilian roses and nasturtiums cover the tree-trunks, pansies and violets bloom in the grass, and tapestries of flowers overhang low stone walls. It has sometimes been a gently melancholy pleasure for me to wander through it and read the epitaphs and names familiar to me long ago.

A granite slab is 'In memory of the first inhabitant of this Silent City, John Orr, interred June 10th, 1854.' I knew his son, who married Mary Shafter.

But the rarest of all San Francisco epitaphs is carved on a granite pyramid in Cypress Lawn, whither it was removed from the old Masonic Cemetery on McAllister Street. The pyramid marks the grave of Hugh Whittell, once a prominent citizen of San Francisco, who composed his epitaph before his death and saw it carved on the stone. I have wished that Hugh Whittell had written the story of his adventures in detail. On his gravestone they are thus re-counted:

Hugh Whittell
In the five divisions of the world I've been;
The cities of Peking and Constantinople I have seen.
On the first railway I rode before others were made,
Saw the first telegraph operate, so useful to trade.
In the first steamship, the Atlantic I crossed;
Suffered six shipwrecks where lives were lost.
In the first steamer to California I did sail,
And went to China by the first Pacific Mail.
After many endeavors my affairs to fix,
In a short time I'll occupy less than two by six.

On the opposite side of the pyramid is carved;

As you that chance this grave to see,
If you can read English, may learn of me.
I traveled, read and studied, mankind to know,
And what most interested them here below;
The present or the future state. Love of Power,
Envy, fear or hate occupied each wakeful hour.
All would teach, but few would understand.
The greater part knew little of either God or Man.
'Love one another,' was a good maxim, all agreed.
Learn, labor, and wait, if you would succeed.

A year or two before the Broderick-Terry duel, there had been a fatal affair of honor, so called, which ended in tragedy for victor as well as victim. The first was a young Southerner, George Penn Johnson, who reluctantly met a politician named Ferguson in a duel arranged by Ferguson's political enemies. Johnson was a happy soul whose wit I had often enjoyed at dinner-parties, a journalist by profession. It was through his newspaper affiliations that he was dragged into the affair. Neither duelist desired to fight, but there was this honor business. Neither could do the common—sense thing and withdraw without sacrificing honor. So they met and Ferguson fell. Johnson's life there-after was of little use to him. He became a recluse, morose and embittered, and slowly drank himself to death.

With the Broderick—Terry affair, dueling ceased to be an honorable method of settling differences in California.

The city grew with astonishing rapidity. New buildings were constantly going up in downtown districts and new residences on the hills — attractive, stable-looking structures to replace the shanties which had served their time. Men of wealth built luxurious homes. In Folsom Street at the foot of Rincon Hill, the Milton Latham house was a mansion set in a broad sweep of lawns with marble statuary gleaming against the shrubbery. A black-and-white flagged marble walk led from high iron gates to the house. Near it John Parrott, the banker, had an imposing home, and on Rincon Hill were many charming houses built in the old style with long French windows opening to galleries; and each with its flower-filled garden.

The Thomas Selby house was among them, and as early as '57 was a center of hospitality. In its pretty little ballroom built out in a wing at one side, we danced at our first ball in San Francisco given for a recent bride and bridegroom, Mr. and Mrs. Hayne.

Mrs. Selby was a fragile little lady, but indefatigably hospitable. While her husband was Mayor of the city, she entertained constantly, and afterward at their Menlo Park home a happy hospitality prevailed. This easy grace of hospitality was a characteristic of the old San Francisco set that the bonanza kings never acquired. Their palaces were opened for splendid balls and state occasions, but too often the great rooms were empty.

In the early sixties, South Park had become an attractive neighborhood, laid out like an English 'Crescent,' with a long strip of parkway on which the houses faced. It was planned by George Gordon, an enterprising Englishman who owned the first sugar refinery in San Francisco. Mrs. Gordon and pretty Miss Nellie were conspicuous in the social scene and George Gordon himself was just generally conspicuous. He had that British sense of a gentleman's duty to offer constructive criticism of public affairs which inspires so many letters to the London 'Times,' and was forever rushing into print about something.

The Gordons built a country home, Mayfield Grange, near Menlo Park, and for a time gave house-parties there in the English manner, serving cold joints for breakfast, to the great astonishment of some of the local gentry. But George Gordon died, and then Miss Nellie; and Mrs. Gordon sold Mayfield Grange to Senator Stanford. It became part of his estate at Palo Alto on which the buildings of Stanford University stand.

One of the most hospitable of South Park homes was that of Senator and Mrs. Gwin, where two daughters and a young son brought the gayety of youth. Mrs. Gwin's oyster suppers were famous and her Christmas eggnog parties. Commodore and Mrs. Watkins were neighbors. He was the urbane commodore of Pacific Mall steamers, and she was a dear soul who wore clusters of corkscrew curls over her ears through changing fashions, until her death; as Mrs. Foard wore her hoopskirts well into the twentieth century. A Market Street dealer who catered to theatrical trade supplied them when others failed.

Mrs. Foard, of the Baltimore Foards, lived at the Oriental with her daughter Julia, who was one of the beauties of the old set. She married Joe Tilden, of Boston, famed as San Francisco's first epicure. I remember how lovely Julia Foard was as bridesmaid for Augusta Hooper at her wedding to Pelham Ames, of Boston. Joe Tilden was best man and their engagement was soon announced.

The Hoopers of South Park were an interesting family, all gifted musically. They had come from Honolulu, where Mr. and Mrs. Hooper had been missionaries in the zeal of their youth, and on musical evenings at their home they often sang old hymns. Gussie, the daughter, played the piano, her brother Edward, the flute, and William Little, a half-brother, the cornet. At Gussie's marriage to Pelham Ames, one of the wedding presents from Boston was a treasured family heirloom, a decanter of old wine, the stopper broken cleanly across the top, which had once been set before George Washington. It had been in the cellar of Fisher Ames, member of Congress from Massachusetts under the first President, and had been placed upon the table at a dinner-party given at the Ames home in Washington's honor. When the butler prepared to pour the wine, the glass stopper proved stubborn, and in his efforts to remove it, it was broken. The host ordered another decanter, and the discarded bottle of Madeira was preserved as souvenir of the dinner, to be handed down though the generations. It met a tragic end, eventually. I must flash forward to the Pelham Ames home in Pacific Avenue, where it stood on a shelf in the dining-room, to record the disaster.

At a dinner-party a few years ago, one of the daughters of the household told the story of the decanter to assembled guests, and finished effectively, indicating the shelf, 'There is the wine that was set before Washington.' Every one looked up, of course, but there was only an empty shelf. The bottle was not in its accustomed place. Mrs. Ames summoned the Japanese butler and made inquiries. He was puzzled. No wine had he seen. Then a great light: 'Oh, yes! Vinegar! Bottle top broken, so I break to get vinegar. Vinegar not good. I throw all away.'

Joe Tilden was a bon viveur of unusual epicurean distinction. He liked to invade the kitchen of the Bohemian Club, don the chef's cap and concoct marvelous dishes for his friends' delectation. Raphael Weill was his successor, and some of their recipes are still honored and used by San Francisco chefs. After his death, a collection of Joe Tilden's recipes was published — the only gentleman's cook-book ever printed, I believe. There was a rare salad of artichoke hearts, and the flavors still linger of Virginia ham boiled in champagne, and iced watermelon filled with claret — triumphs of a gastronomic period now sadly past.

In those days there were feasts at the Friedlander and Bowie homes in South Park, the like of which will probably never again regale the human race. For gourmets as I knew them are extinct in this age of counted calories. We never thought of our silhouettes in the dietary dark ages of which I write, but lingered for hours over dinner, discussing a menu of seventeen courses. Mrs. Bowie once told me that if she sat down at half-past six and rose from the table before midnight, she considered the dinner a failure; either rushed in the serving, or not enough to eat. She was the wife of Dr. Alexander Bowie, a retired navy surgeon, and their South Park home was a social center for long years. Mrs. Friedlander, whose dinners rivaled the Bowies', was from South Carolina, the wife of Isaac Friedlander, who aspired to be the Grain King of California. He was a clever, cultured Jew from Hamburg, of whom his wife always insisted with dignity that Isaac was a Hebrew, not a Jew; so perhaps he was.

Half-past six was the fashionable hour for dinners, which began with oysters on the half-shell, went through soup, fish, entrées (note the plural), salad, game, roast, 'Roman punch,' and desserts to liqueurs. Wines would be sherry, sauterne, claret, and champagne, with sometimes port at the end. Naturally a dinner of this sort, all served in courses, was an affair of several hours.

A curious relic of this gastronomic period is the menu for a dinner we gave to some English visitors, of which I append a copy:

New Year's calling was an established custom in the sixties and seventies, and a queer custom it was with gorgeous possibilities for Gilbert and Sullivan had they ever availed themselves; battalions of calling gentlemen and receiving ladies would have made a rarely effective chorus. Most of the large homes kept 'open house' on New Year's Day, the hostess assisted by several young lady friends, a first group to be relieved by others during the afternoon, for it was a long day, often beginning as early as 11 A.M. The first callers would be gentlemen with extended lists who were hopeful of reaching Mrs. Gwin's by dinner-time. Collations were served at all open houses, but Mrs. Gwin's spread surpassed them all, and after hot oysters, cold birds, jellied meats, salads, and desserts, with accompanying wines, there would be dancing for those still able to enjoy it.

If one were not receiving, it was in order to close the blinds of the house and shroud it in dim silence. Callers then merely left cards without asking for 'the ladies.' But cards were carefully counted, and any young man beholden for past hospitalities, who failed to pay his debt with a card left in person, was stricken from the list of the slighted hostess.

Speaking of menus and chefs, San Francisco restaurants have been noted for their cuisines since pioneer days. California had always richly supplied markets, for the Spaniards lived well long before the gringos came. As early as the fifties, Clayton's Restaurant in Commercial Street, and Martin's a few doors beyond, were better than most New York restaurants. Winn's Fountain-Head of Luxuries had a grand name, but in spite of it, excellent food. For terrapin and oyster suppers, we went to Captain Cropper's in Second Street. In the sixties this place was taken over by a man named Harkness, who did catering for social events. Terrapin and oysters were usually ordered, ready to serve, from Harkness.

But Peter Job was really the first caterer. He was an excitable little Frenchman and a most accomplished confectioner whose shop in Washington Street displayed intricate effects in frosting and spun sugar. Peter Job's was a popular place for ice-cream and cake on warm afternoons, and he frosted most of society's wedding cakes. Sugar doves and wedding bells adorned them.

Doubtless Peter Job frosted the wedding cake when Sue Sweringen married Judge Stephen J. Field. We went to the ceremony at little Grace Church in Powell Street. No decorations; no display of any sort — it was not yet fashionable. The bride wore white muslin, the flaring skirt all ruffled, and her sister, as bridesmaid, wore the same simple fabric. Distinctly I recall the squeak of Judge Field's shoes as he walked down the aisle. Brand-new, of course, and developing the squeak unexpectedly, no doubt. Not long afterward, Bell Sweringen married Andrew McCreery at Grace Church, but there were no guests. Bride and bridegroom drove up to the church alone one evening, and announcements after the marriage surprised society.

The Sweringen girls were all unusually bright and all had interesting careers — Mrs. Field as a hostess in Washington and Mrs. McCreery as owner of a stable of racing-horses in England where she was long one of the Prince of Wales's set. It was said she inspired the character of 'The Sporting Duchess' in a play of that name once popular in London and New York. A third sister became Mrs. Condit-Smith, of Washington, and one of her pretty daughters married General Leonard Wood.

The Hall McAllisters moved down to South Park from the old family house in Stockton Street and gave a fancy-dress ball in the new house which made social history. I went as Summer in a flower-garlanded dress which trailed all around. Kate Robinson stepped on it. 'It's too long,' she said. I looked at her Pierrette costume all of two inches above her ankles.

'Yes, it is too long,' I answered. 'We might both profit if you added some of it to yours'; for such brevity as she displayed was daring, indeed, and likely to shock conservatives. Kate Robinson laughed and pirouetted to prove her assurance. She was a spirited girl, one of the really clever women in society later when as Mrs. Monroe Salisbury she became something of a social power.

Mrs. Frank Pixley was Marie Antoinette that night and very effective with her powdered hair and rose silk gown. She, too, was one of society's clever women, wife of an intrepid editor whose pen was feared by the weak brothers of politics. Frank Pixley owned a weekly paper, 'The Argonaut,' and himself wrote its trenchant editorials. Bret Harte was a contributor.

Of the McAllister house a true story has become legend in San Francisco. Hall McAllister lost it at poker to Captain Harry Lyon, a dashing gentleman from New Orleans who won it just in time to present it to his daughter for a wedding gift. Cora Lyon was married from the family home in Harrison Street and her post-honeymoon receptions were held in the house that was staked and lost in a game of poker.

Our new home in O'Farrell Street was uptown then, near the old place at O'Farrell and Jones Streets known as the 'Johnson Mansion,' where lived a happy colony of cats. Mrs. Johnson left them ten thousand dollars in her will — it may have been twenty thousand — and they all moved to a ranch in Sonoma County, where for all I know their descendants are still living.

Also near was the home of Joseph Duncan, a suave and cultured gentleman who was cashier of the Bank of California and whose fortunes crashed with Ralston's. He was known as a connoisseur of the arts and was often asked to select paintings and marbles for the palaces of his friends who knew little about them. His own house at Geary and Taylor Streets held many treasures. Isadora, his daughter, was born there about the time of the crash, and the family soon afterward moved to Oakland. She was still a small girl when she played the piano for her mother's juvenile dancing-classes and they all went abroad to live long before she dreamed of becoming a dancer.

We gave many musicales at the O'Farrell Street home when my sister Annie sang. She had a lovely voice. One evening Louis Gottschalk played her accompaniments. He was a dreamy-eyed youth, but already famous as a pianist. Felix Pioche, the French banker, brought him to one of our parties and we were delighted to welcome him.

Gottschalk lived for several years in San Francisco, where he gave piano lessons, and all his fair pupils fell in love with him or with his magnetic music. There was no end of gossip over one romance with a South Park belle which threatened to end in an elopement. But she was locked in her room; the musician departed for wider fame in the East, and in a year or two she married an Army officer stationed on Angel Island.

Adelaide Phillips, the contralto, was our guest of honor one evening. She had brought a letter to my mother from Mrs. Doremus, of New York, and dined with us several times, to delight us with her singing. Gottschalk was her accompanist.

I think it was the same season that the Vandewaters gave a reception for Mr. and Mrs. Bayard Taylor when the poet-traveler came to lecture on Sweden. Mrs. Taylor was a young German girl, daughter of a Herr Professor, whom he had married abroad and who obviously looked upon her husband as a very great man. He really was a leading figure in American letters, then, although I doubt if any one reads him avidly now. Mr. Taylor, one felt, shared his wife's estimate of her husband, and stood very tall and toplofty beside Mrs. Vandewater to meet her guests. Presentations were effected with reverence, and when the solemn privilege had been accorded, one passed on into a hushed assemblage. It was all rather pontifical. No one conversed with Mr. Taylor, but he delivered a few brief monologues — one on changes he noted in San Francisco since his first visit. He had followed the Gold Rush to write letters about it for the 'New York Tribune,' 'when the water came up to Montgomery Street,' a familiar phrase to recall the city's past era.