Part 14

He shook off his depression. "Everybody was in the Plaza sometime in the day, and once a month when Telegraph Hill signaled a steamer, everybody was here."

"Telegraph Hill? I never heard of it," he cast an accusing glance in my direction.

"It belongs to forty-nine," I retorted.

"All the shops closed immediately," continued the miner, "and Postmaster Geary was the most important man in town. The post-office was a block up the hill at Clay and Pike Streets, but the lines from the windows stretched down into the Plaza, and over among the tents and chaparral on California Street Hill. Men stood for hours, sometimes all night, in the pouring rain, and many a time I sold my place for ten dollars, and even twenty, to some fellow who had less patience or less time than I.

"But you should have been here on election day in fifty-one." The miner threw back his head and laughed aloud. "Colonel Jack Hays was running for sheriff," he resumed, "and his opponent hired a band to play in front of his store here on the Plaza as an advertisement. It worked fine! He was polling all the votes and the Colonel was about out of the running, 'til he got on his horse that he'd used on the Texas ranges and came cavorting into the square. He showed 'em some fancy turns they weren't used to and kept it up 'til the polls closed."

"Did he win?" I asked excitedly.

"Well, I guess he did! Hands down. But a sheriff ain't no use when the laws won't stick. That's why we had to have the Vigilance Committees."

I arose. That was a long story and the afternoon was fast going. My companion took the hint. He extended his hand and grasped the old miner's heartily.

"I thank you," he said, "you have opened up a new epoch to me and I shall not soon forget you. I shall come again and the place will have lost much of its interest if you are not here."

"Oh, I'll be here," laughed the old fellow. "It's home to me."

Telegraph Hill

The Latin Quarter. The signal station of '49 and a view of the city as it was. The Golden Gate.

Telegraph Hill of Unique Fame

"Would you like to go up 'crazy owld, daisy owld Telegraft Hill'," I asked in a softened mood as we moved away. "There is just about time."

"Indeed I should," he answered. "Can we take in some of the other things you archaeologists were mentioning on the way? I don't want to miss anything."

"We must leave the Parrott and Niantic buildings until some other day, but you can see the Montgomery Block if you wish," and we turned down Washington Street. "It was built on piles, by General Halleck's law firm. William Tecumseh Sherman's bank was nearby, but I suppose most of Boston's business men were generals-in-chief of the United States Army."

My irony was ignored and as we reached the corner of Montgomery, I continued: "It was on this spot that James King of William, editor of the 'Bulletin,' was shot down by James P. Casey, the ballot-box stuffer. The newspaper office was at the other end of the block on Merchant Alley, and that evening's editorial accused Casey of electing himself supervisor and stated that he was an ex-convict from Sing Sing. Within an hour after the paper appeared, Mr. King was carried dying to his room in the same building. It was this murder that brought the second Vigilance Committee into existence. While the immense funeral cortège, the largest San Francisco has ever known, escorted the body of Mr. King up this street toward Lone Mountain Cemetery, Casey and Cora, another criminal, were hung in front of the Vigilance, Headquarters on Sacramento near Front."

"You called it Fort Gunnybags ?" he queried.

"Yes, it was so named from the precautionary bulwark of sand-filled sacks piled up in a hollow square in front to protect the entrance. A bronze plate marked the old building before the fire."

We turned into Columbus Avenue. "Your beloved Stevenson used to live at No. 8, there on the gore where the Italian Bank is," I said. "We are coming to the Latin Quarter, a section that has always been given over to foreigners, for in early days 'Sidneyville,' peopled by ticket-of-leave men from the penal colony of Australia, and 'Little Chile' of the Peruvians and Chileans, clustered close around the base of Telegraph Hill."

"The very place Stevenson would choose, where life was flavored with history and the mystery of the foreign. But where are you going?" he exclaimed, stopping short as I began to ascend the steps by which Kearny Street climbs the hill.

"I thought you wished to see the site of the Marine Signal Station." I looked down at him from the fourth stair with feigned surprise.

"I do, indeed, but--can't we go up by a funicular and come down this way?" he compromised. "My Boston calves protest."

"Oh well, we can go by the level a little farther, but I thought you liked the 'flavor of the foreign.' Anyway, we ought to see Earl Cummings' old man," I remembered.

"What is his fatherland and his business?" he asked as his eye traveled over the shop signs "Sanguinetti, Farmacia Italiana," "Molinari & Cariani, Grocers;" "Oliva & Brizzolara, Real Estate."

"His birthplace is the World Universal, and his profession-leading us back to nature," I answered. Then, as we passed the spick and span concrete façade of the Patronal Church of St. Francis, with its rear of burned brick: "This is the direct descendent of the old Mission," I told him, "the first Parish Church of San Francisco. It was gutted by the fire and is being very gradually restored. A notice within administers an implied rebuke: 'The First Erected--the Last Restored.'"

We paused at the iron fence of the small green triangle cut off from Washington Square by the slant of Columbus Avenue, and peered at the fine bronze figure of a sinewy old man stooping to drink from his hand on the edge of the little pool.

"Mr. Cummings' message to his universal brothers," he commented. "None could fail to be refreshed by it. My strength is renewed. Let us ascend," and he turned up Filbert Street.