lttl 
 
 UC-NRLF 
 

 GIFT OF 
 
the fl wakening of Poccalitc 
 
 A Tal* of Telegraph Hill, 
 
 OTHER TALES 
 
 EUGENIA KELLOGG 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO 
 1903. 
 
Copywright, 1903. 
 
 by 
 The Author. 
 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Page. 
 
 The Awakening of Poccalito 9 
 
 A Mexican Holiday 39 
 
 Chief Skowl s Revenge . . . . . . 57 
 
 A Heroine of Diplomacy . 75 
 
 A Sleuth of Stowaways 99 
 
 The Story of a Curse II7 
 
 TRAD* SUPPLIED BY THE SAN FRANCISCO NEWS COMPANY 
 
 326013 
 
TO MY MOTHER 
 
 Sarab Bun 2> jstran#*1Rello0a 
 
 " The depth and dream of my desire, 
 The bitter paths wherein I stray 
 Thou knowest " 
 
I have read your stories which I return 
 with hearty indorsement, not only because they 
 are new to a world which has long been sated 
 with golden skies, golden fields, golden sonsets 
 and golden gates, but because they are true, 
 
 Here you have the Greek fishermen as I 
 found them forty years ago and as they will be 
 centuries hence. Here are the Italian egg 
 gatherers, as off their own coast, In fact, you 
 heue widened the world our California world 
 and made the land more entirely Italy than 
 ever before. 
 
 If you mean to make-. a book with these 
 stories, I would suggest that you include your 
 biography of Mayor Sutra, the great, good 
 friend of the poor and especially those you 
 have so faithfully sketched, 
 
 M^ttoc* 
 
THE AWAKENING OF FOCCALITO 
 
THE AWAKENING OF 
 POCCALITO. 
 
 A TALE OF TELEGRAPH HILL, 
 SAN FRANCISCO. 
 
 It would, indeed, be unwarrantable pre 
 sumption to rechristen the seventh in the 
 Giomi household; for if there existed any 
 thing of which the child could claim a suffi 
 ciency, it was names ; and these had received 
 such solemnization as falls unfrequently to 
 the lot of the lowly. 
 
 A many-shrined saint in the cr endar 
 of Mother Church had been pronounced his 
 patron. 
 
 A worthy man and worthier woman of 
 the flesh, at an early date, after his advent 
 into this valley of humiliation, had stood 
 sponsors at his christening. 
 
 The two respectable and most industri 
 ous persons, directly responsible for his pres- 
 
10 THE AWAKECTIN& O? POCCALITO 
 
 ence here, had caused the following entry 
 to be made in the yellow-leaved, dusty, 
 musty date book, filed within the shadowy 
 archives of old St. Francis Church "Fran 
 cisco Sebastian Tomasso Fugazi Giomi, 
 born February I3th, 18 , San Francisco, 
 California." 
 
 Despite the foregoing facts, however, he 
 was called Poccalito and Poccalito, so far 
 as this narrative is concerned, he shall re 
 main. 
 
 Truth to tell, the sobriquet seemed not 
 inapt, the word Poccalito interpreted from 
 the mellow Latin, being "little one," and, 
 in this instance, apposite; for about the 
 misshapen hump, borne above the boy s nar 
 row shoulders; his spikey arms, lean legs, 
 infantile feet, the weazened countenance, 
 topped by a shock of stringy, unkempt hair, 
 was written the inexorable law of econ 
 omy. 
 
 Never, in all his little life, had Poccalito 
 known what it was to have enough of any 
 thing. Scrimped in his food, his clothing, 
 his time, his affections, his education, his 
 companionship, his bit of navigable space, 
 this offspring of human discrepancy pre- 
 
THE AWAKENING OF POCCALITO 11 
 
 sented a picture, comparable to the desert, 
 if shorn of breadth, length, mirages and 
 skies of cloud and blue. 
 
 Mother Nature to Poccalito, had been 
 niggardly. 
 
 Even his arrival into this world, would, 
 with thankfulness, have been averted. 
 There were so many before him in the 
 cramped quarters, where he first caught the 
 breath of this woe-begotten life! What 
 wonder that his diminutive dimensions were 
 there grudgingly given space! 
 
 Giomi the elder Poccalito s father 
 was one of the many crab fishermen 
 of San Francisco, who manage to 
 snatch a living from those freakish 
 tides that surge in the short, still hours 
 when "midnight whitens into morn." All 
 weathers wind, rain, fog, or fair found 
 this faithful follower of the Apostolic craft 
 on his way to the wide, net-hung wharf by 
 the city s seawall, there to join the swarthy- 
 skinned brotherhood of the low-built, la 
 teen-sailed boats. 
 
 The good wife Poccalito s mother 
 made the early breakfast and saw that the 
 simple luncheon of bread, meat and wine 
 
12 THE AWAKENING OF POCCALITO 
 
 was in the hands of her spouse, as he set 
 forth for the long day s "catch." 
 
 The real labor of her day then began; 
 in that day there was bread to be baked, 
 (bread for eleven) washing of garments 
 for the younger ones, while they slept; 
 breakfast to be prepared and for those in 
 attendance at the day school, certain atten 
 tions, as to dress, bestowed. Poccalito, be 
 ing crippled, was excused from school, and 
 so, the business of tending the baby fell to 
 him. 
 
 There was always a baby in the Giomi 
 household. During the day, in those hours 
 while baby obligingly slept, Poccalito 
 helped his mother with the weaving, for, 
 in addition to her innumerable tasks, Ma- 
 dama Giomi made and repaired nets, such 
 as fishermen use in their work, thus add 
 ing to the family income. 
 
 Notwithstanding all this dreadful indus 
 try, however, the Giomis were very poor, 
 for crab fishing, in the City of the Golden 
 Gate is a cruel monopoly. The bloused, 
 tarn-capped, round-ear-ringed, little brown 
 men of the Latin race, who rise so long be 
 fore the sun, to face the fickle tides, in the 
 
THE AWAKENING OF POCCALITO 13 
 
 twilight of the morning, may claim but a 
 small share from their toil s accruement. 
 What, with the wharf hire, net hire, boat 
 hire and demands of the commission mer 
 chants, little is left for the crab-fisher s 
 patient pains. 
 
 It followed, therefore, that with the best 
 efforts of the united Giomis, they remained 
 at the end of each year, financially, about 
 where they began. 
 
 To be sure they owned property, con 
 sisting of a bit of ground and a four-roomed 
 timber cottage on Telegraph Hill, an im 
 posing promontory, of superb scenic propor 
 tions, but of soil and social texture, con 
 ceded to be the poorest upon the whole sea- 
 sprayed peninsula. 
 
 A sprinkling of scrub oak, madrone and 
 manzanita comprised its original herbage, 
 but these for the most part, had been 
 cleared, to give place to vegetable gardens, 
 flower beds, a few eucalyptus trees and such 
 sublunary habitations as the Giomi s. An 
 enterprising German, tenderly mindful of 
 the Fatherland and his Mother Rhine, had 
 topped the hill with a tower and equipped 
 it with telescopes and other scenic appur- 
 
14 THE AWAKENING OP POCCALITO 
 
 tenances; a cable, extending from the hill s 
 base to its summit, received the patronage 
 of tourists and the artist class; but this 
 public benefaction, proving a pecuniary 
 failure, resulted in the withdrawal of the 
 cabled coaches. 
 
 The tower lapsed into disuse, save for 
 the birds, bats and kindred feathered folk, 
 that lodged in its humanly abandoned bat 
 tlements. 
 
 The Gothic buttresses moulded and 
 rotted under the ocean s ozoned spray; 
 storm, sun and rains left their scars on 
 the grim turrets, all of which gave the hill 
 a complexion of the picturesque. 
 
 The Giomis and their neighbors who oc 
 cupied the lower steeps, gave genuine evi 
 dence of the artistic appreciation, as they 
 were wont to speak, with becoming pride, 
 of "our castle." 
 
 With their castle of exceptional im- 
 pressiveness, their legal title to a scrap of 
 earth, their wood cottages, their work and 
 their wage, the hill people occupied, os 
 tensibly, a position of narrow inde 
 pendence. Had their realty remained unto 
 
THE AWAKENING OF FOCCALITO 15 
 
 them inviolate, such position might have 
 been maintained, but unfortunately for 
 them, the bartizan-browed hill contained 
 rock, of a gade desired for street and other 
 public improvements. 
 
 Why Nob Hill, Russian Hill, Pacific 
 Heights, or any other residential eminence, 
 within the limits of the many-parapeted 
 metropolis was not sought, for the prescrib 
 ed grade of rock is not apparent, except 
 that the latter, being homes of the rich, are 
 exempt from municipal molestation. 
 
 To a company of sordid street contrac 
 tors, bent upon getting the most raw ma 
 terial for the least money, what matter, 
 whether or not, a few "Dagos" as they were 
 designated, lost their homes? 
 
 Well, indeed, did those politically- 
 favored officials know, the small fry of the 
 hill had not the means for presentation of 
 their claims in court, the contest of injunc 
 tion suits, neither the needed knowledge of 
 American language and law, requisite to an 
 appeal before a trust-mantled tribunal. 
 
 It followed that of the Giomi acreage, 
 which comprised at the date of purchase, 
 a moderately fruitful slope, where flowers 
 
16 THE AWAKEKllTa OP POCCAI.ITO 
 
 bloomed perennially and succulent veget 
 ables throve and bearded goats browsed 
 and gray stones thrust their scarred faces 
 through twining creepers, naught remained, 
 save a narrow shelf above a sheer wall, 
 which frequent blasting and constant tun 
 neling, threatened sure destruction. 
 
 To the hill people, whose estates were 
 thus, by official behest, fast crumbling be 
 neath their helpless feet, no recompense was 
 offered, no reimbursement made. 
 
 As Giomi the elder watched the foun 
 dations of his home being daily carted away, 
 what wonder that he muttered bitterly in 
 the depths of his sun-tanned throat, "God 
 help the poor, the rich can steal!" 
 
 From his perch upon the narrow porch, 
 fronting the natal nest, roofing the sheer 
 wall s surface, where it was his habit to sit 
 in sunny weather and mind the ever-present 
 baby, or help his mother with the never- 
 ending nets, Poccalito likewise watched the 
 gangs of rock-cutters, carters, drillers, blast 
 ers, crushers, while engaged in that wanton 
 wreckage of what held all the boy knew 
 of home; but with impressions vastly dif 
 ferent from those entertained by his sire. 
 
THE AWAKENIWO OP FOCCALITO 17 
 
 In the son s innocent thought, those men, 
 with their cumbersome tools of toil, were 
 simply brethren of the spade, spike, pick and 
 adze, whose constant employment, since he 
 knew not its purpose, furnished sources of 
 human comradeship, which served rather to 
 inspire than depress; for Poccalito was 
 only a child, who knew naught of politics, 
 sociology, injustice, corruption, nor any of 
 the class distinctions borne by the strange 
 systems of men. What, to him, was misery 
 or happiness? pleasure or pain? honor or 
 disgrace? wealth or poverty? 
 
 His short life had been eventless 
 and serene as the shining river that 
 flows ever between willow-fringed banks 
 and pebbly shallows, unswollen by shower, 
 unshrunken by drouth, unrippled by reach 
 of summer cloud; but there came an 
 awakening, when Poccalito was doomed to 
 exchange the sylvan fields of contentment, 
 for the desolating desert of unrest. 
 
 To many another, the date is unforget 
 table; that of the 25th May 1898, 
 when, in response to their country s call, 
 the Native Sons of California, went forth 
 to face the flinty front of war. Volunteers 
 
18 TEE AWAKENING OP FOCCA&ITO 
 
 were wanted for the United States Army 
 in the Philippines and these, our youths, 
 in life s beautiful morning, gathered from 
 hill and vale, meadow and mountain side; 
 forsaking the mines, vines, plow, store, of 
 fice, schoolhouse, mill and whatever else of 
 business or pleasure that engaged them, to 
 don the soldier s garb of blue and grey. 
 
 Up from the ranks of the militia they 
 rose, to serve with their brother civilians, 
 all stirred by a kindred sentiment, each 
 moved by a common cause the defense of 
 their flag. And that flag, as its folds pic 
 tured the trafficking streets, streamed from 
 every eminence, curtained the yellow sun, 
 stiffened to every breeze, starred the ships 
 sails on the blue of the bay, gave eloquent 
 tongue to the cause. It sustained them, as 
 they moved in bayonetted battalions, from 
 the freshly-tented Presidio, through throng- 
 lined thoroughfares, to the city s water 
 front, amid the deafening din of guns, 
 sirens, bombs, cheers, music, megaphones 
 and all that combined to make pageantry 
 imposing. 
 
 "It s all for Old Glory" they said, in 
 one exultant voice, as the sobs were choked 
 
THE AWAKENING* OF POCCALITO 19 
 
 back, hands clasped, parting tokens ex 
 changed, gift garlands pressed to quivering 
 lips, the final words spoken (brave, noble, 
 heroic words) that told of daring and do 
 ing and dying. 
 
 Right royally were they escorted, as they 
 sailed through the purple pillared portal 
 the Golden Gate. 
 
 Stately yachts, the offspring of luxury 
 and leisure, spread their snowy sails and 
 condescended to salute the soldier sons of 
 the State. Matronly schooners and lumber 
 ing stern-wheelers, vied with one another in 
 solicitude, ear-piercing and prolonged. 
 Tugs, sloops, smacks, brigs and barkentines 
 puffed out their "god-speeds" even to trie 
 edge of old Neptune s main. Stuffy gaso 
 line launches, freighted to perspiring ca 
 pacity, coughed up their "goodbyes" as far 
 out as the sea swells would let them. 
 
 Trim Gussies, Carries, Mamies, Merties, 
 Susies fair weather built vessels one and 
 all, with banners fluttering and string bands 
 vibrating, steamed across the bar for the 
 sake of the dear boys. Row boats rose to 
 the occasion, sculling in the shadow of grim 
 gun boats, conveying tender traffic to the 
 
20 THE AWAKENING OF POCCALITO 
 
 newly created heroes. The launch of the 
 Red Cross, faithful to her merciful minis 
 trations, was the last to take leave of the 
 troopers. 
 
 Then, with a farewell from the brazen 
 throats of fortressed Alcatraz, which the 
 steadfast hills repeated and re-repeated, the 
 white mists of the sea closed over them and 
 they were gone as the dream things of our 
 sleep ! 
 
 Witnessed by Poccalito from his eyrie on 
 the cliff s shelf, these scenes and sounds 
 awoke a wizard wisdom, which bore him 
 far and irretraceably, beyond the border 
 lands of childhood; for with indefinable 
 intuition, the ghostly heritage of the af 
 flicted, he knew, that not for him was brass- 
 buttoned uniform of blue, star-blent banner, 
 neighing steed, spirit-stirring drum, shrill 
 trump, nor leaves of bloom and bay. 
 
 Not for him the "pride, pomp and circum 
 stance of glorious war;" he could never 
 be a soldier. With this crushing conscious 
 ness, the hump on his back seemed insup 
 portable, his misshapen little feet became 
 enormous leaden clods. With this esoteric 
 glimpse at his own meagerness, a shrivelling 
 
THE AWAKENING OF POCCALITO 21 
 
 mortification seized him; his clothes, the 
 cast-off of elder brothers, at first hand not 
 by any means first-class, were but shreds 
 and patches. Any old thing was thought to 
 be good enough for a boy to wear, who 
 could not walk and did not go to school. 
 
 In the matter of boots, there was, for the 
 little cripple, an even more forlorn dispo 
 sition, such as fell to him being, not merely 
 second, but third or fourth hand, always 
 ill-fitting, miserably scuffed and down at 
 the heel. 
 
 Except a garment, in its tattered 
 insufficiency, caused him to shiver with cold, 
 or a coarse brogan, contained a protruding 
 nail, or a pebble secreted in gaping soles, 
 pierced his flesh, Poccalito had not suffered ; 
 he had not felt this mean apparelling to 
 have been a degradation; but, by contrast 
 with the lithe-limbed, straight-backed sol 
 diers, so splendid in their new regimentals 
 upon this, the day of his broader vision, the 
 spectacle of being merely a receiver of dis 
 carded clothes, smote him to the heart. 
 
 In all his life to come and it widened 
 away interminably, he could not hope to be 
 other than what he was a domestic dolt, 
 
22 THE AWAKSNIHQ OP POCCALITO 
 
 a drudge, a clod, a cumberer of the earth, 
 a creature in the way. To this starved son 
 of opulent California, the thought, with the 
 swallowing despair of it, gave him a tight 
 ening of the throat, akin to strangulation. 
 
 How old had he grown in those few 
 hours! To what desert solitudes did he 
 suddenly find himself doomed! There 
 could be no return to the unknowing, in 
 different contentment, which had formed 
 the sum of this boy s yesterday. On and on 
 forever, in company with all discoverers, 
 must he yearn and sigh and pine and wait 
 and wonder and despair, for this is the in 
 evitable penalty of progression. 
 
 The spring of San Francisco merged 
 into mid-summer, with no discernible 
 change of climate, except for the riotous 
 trade-winds, that rose at each mid-day and 
 continued until set of sun. The vernal hills 
 seared in the sun s searching rays. Flag- 
 lilies ceased to bloom beside star-eyed mar 
 guerites. The poppies closed their satin 
 petals to yellow the slopes no more, until 
 next year. 
 
 The gossamer haze that hung, as a veil, 
 upon Mount Tamalpais and loftier lifts of 
 
THE AWAKENING OF FOCCALITO 23 
 
 the coast thickened, as it descended and 
 wrapped blanketing folds about the storm- 
 swathed city. 
 
 At the Giomi domicile, the passing sea 
 sons brought no perceptible change, since 
 life to the poor admits of little variety. 
 Work, always work, from stark morn to 
 starry eve, is the routine, year in, year out. 
 With the excavators of the hill, there oc 
 curred a brief suspension of activities and 
 one day, when Giomi the elder returned 
 a little earlier than custom usually per 
 mitted, from his cruise among the crab cav 
 erns, a surprise awaited him in the form 
 of an official visitation; it had been long 
 deferred. The wonder was that it came 
 at all. 
 
 The remaining declivity occupied by the 
 Giomi cottage was wanted for the augmen 
 tation of public utility, the officials ex 
 plained. "Could it be purchased?" 
 
 With scorn long smothered in his sul 
 try eyes, the beggarly bit of Little Italy 
 glared inflammably at some of the minor 
 representatives of the earth s greatest nation 
 and then, in feeble, but feeling English, 
 hissed 
 
24 THE AWAKENING OP POCCAZ.ITO 
 
 "You takka my land. My goats, they 
 starve. My hens you kill. The cow, 
 she die, she not have feed. You gitta my 
 garden. Now you wantta my house. No! 
 No! pigs! thieves! robbers! Go home!" 
 
 And so they were dismissed. 
 
 Well did Giomi the elder know that 
 the price to be proffered for his shrunken 
 estate (the cottage was not wanted ) would 
 barely cover the cost of removal, much less 
 purchase a new home elsewhere. The pay 
 ment of rent was, to him, unthinkable and 
 so, with his growing brood, he remained 
 on the scrappy shelf of stone. 
 
 The sun bronzed and brightened it with 
 rays of ruby, amber and jasper, so much 
 more kindly is the Creator than are His 
 creatures. 
 
 The autumnal fogs fell protectingly over 
 it, clothing with mantles of pearl, ivory and 
 silver gray, the spare, bald, riven spaces. 
 The winds softened to soothing lullabys, 
 for the trades spent themselves before reach 
 ing this sheltered cove upon the hillside. 
 
 With the approach of winter the long 
 days shortened. The rain came in torrents, 
 sheets and saturating shrouds; windless, 
 
THE AWAKENING OF POCCALITO 25 
 
 thunderless, frostless, soundless, straight 
 down from the dun-dyed clouds. 
 
 The year passed. With the birth of the 
 new came Poccalito s God-Father, Antoine 
 Martinello, on his annual visit to the gull s 
 nest, as he called Giomi s niche, because a 
 sea gull had once nested there. 
 
 Martinello was a vegetable vender, who 
 hawked on the public highway, his own 
 green and succulent wares. "Cauliflowers! 
 Asparagus! Squashes! Lettuce! Celery! 
 Beans ! Peas ! Cucumbers ! fresh, all fresh to 
 day!" 
 
 His cart and horse were familiar in 
 the Latin quarter, as well as a joy to child 
 ren of the streets, whom he frequently fa 
 vored with a ride, after the vehicle s con 
 tents were disposed of, out, away from their 
 forlorn locality, to where the grass grows 
 and the reaching waves clasp the shore. 
 
 When rains prevented this mutually 
 agreeable outing, Martinello held in reserve 
 another means of bringing smiles to the 
 faces of neglected little ones. Of his day s 
 stock in trade, which included some of the 
 seasonable fruits, there was rarely a com 
 plete "clean-up." To most venders of per- 
 
26 THE AWAKENING OP FOCCAX.ITO 
 
 ishable stuffs, this condition is deplored; 
 not so, however, with Martinello, since his 
 left-over commodities found ready distribu 
 tion among his little love customers, as they 
 were called, those waifs of w p ant and woe, 
 whose present needs are ever in excess of 
 their supplies. In San Francisco s poorer 
 districts, herd children, uncensused, that 
 would not, probably, know the taste of Cal 
 ifornia fruits, but for Martinello. 
 
 It was his benign front that fell athwart 
 the Giomi threshold, on a morning, her 
 alded by bells and kindred reverberating in 
 struments, as a glad New Year. 
 
 "Well, Poccalito!" said the little father, 
 after the conventional salutations were 
 passed, "You will soon be ten, almost a 
 man!" Even as the little father spoke, the 
 words conveyed a misnomer, as Poccalito 
 had never before presented a picture more 
 lean, languid, colorless ; more removed from 
 the physical conception of manhood. More 
 over, there was, in the boy s haggard coun 
 tenance, an expression which had not been 
 visible the year previous, one of hopeless de 
 pression, pathetic indeed to behold in one so 
 young. 
 
THE AWAKENING OP POCCAZ.ITO 27 
 
 "I see you ve been stopping too much in 
 the house!" rejoined Martinello, "I must 
 take you out where the sunflowers grow, 
 Eh! Poccalito!" With this, a glint of 
 what makes the sunflowers turn their faces, 
 crossed the boy s pinched face. "I ll take 
 you to-morrow, if it is fine." 
 
 But Nannetta " interposed Madama 
 Giomi, referring to the baby, "I not can 
 spare Poccalito." Here was an obstacle, 
 to be sure, but father Antoine proved him 
 self equal to it, by proposing that Nannetta 
 be placed during the brother s absence, in a 
 child s nursery adjacent; in fact, he (An 
 toine) agreed to carry and fetch her, and 
 so, the mother consenting , Poccalito again 
 saw the source of the sunflowers growth. 
 
 But on the morrow the rain came in 
 sheets, it would not be amiss to say, blank 
 ets which made the rivuleted, unpaved 
 roads so slippery that Martinello himself 
 could not, with safety, attempt a passage, 
 to say nothing of the danger to beast and 
 cart. 
 
 A big wind swept up from the south-lands, 
 hurricaning the hills, skurrying the streets, 
 careering in the valleys, wailing in house 
 
28 THE AWAKENING OF FOCCALITO 
 
 crevices, heightening the whitecaps on the 
 bay. This meant that the rain had come 
 to stay. 
 
 Alas! for Poccalito! Alas! for all the 
 children of the little father! To them, the 
 rains bring cold, hunger, disease, death for 
 without the sun in California, the poor are 
 doubly disinherited; their places of abode 
 being, at best, but small, thin-walled, cheap 
 ly constructed timber tenements, unpro 
 vided with heating facilities, few of which 
 contain even chimneys. 
 
 Cooking, except the family go to restaur 
 ants for food, is performed by the aid of 
 coal oil lamps. 
 
 The effect of this cramped, cheerless ex 
 istence upon the little people, is better im 
 agined than described. Happily for them, 
 the rain season varies and is dispelled by 
 sunshine, that signal for outdoor life, wel 
 comed by all growing things. Thrice wel 
 come was the golden globe, in the 
 scrappy tent of blue, visible from the narrow 
 window where Poccalito watched and 
 waited, for he knew the little father would 
 not disappoint him and he did not. 
 
 In the year of grace here chronicled, there 
 
THE AWAKENING OF POCCALITO 29 
 
 had been unusual rainfall, alternated by 
 thick fogs and chilling winds, at least, so 
 said the pioneers and they ought to know. 
 "The climate of California is changing. 
 Why! When we came here in forty-nine, 
 there was no need of fire in camp, save for 
 cooking; if it keeps on in this way we shall 
 have snow. The change is due, doubtless, 
 to the destruction of the forests. When 
 the snow comes and the big trees are all 
 gone, it wont any more be California for 
 us." 
 
 This, the verdict of the path-finders. 
 Hence, it happened, that by the time An- 
 toine and his outfit again appeared on the 
 castellated hill, winter had well nigh passed. 
 
 Wistfully had they been awaited and 
 now, happy Poccalito! 
 
 To live but one day in the open, under the 
 wide, paternal sky, away from the thrall- 
 dom of coal oil stoves, grimy walls, sicken 
 ing stenches, net-weaving, baby-minding 
 and all the indoor, enervating, never-ending 
 routine! This was happiness! 
 
 Night mists yet lingered upon the Marin 
 hills. The near patches of shrub showed 
 
30 THE AWAKENING OP POCCALITO 
 
 jeweled damps in the struggling beams of 
 the morning, for the day was still young. 
 
 "It s going to be fine!" remarked Mar- 
 tinello, who had made a study of weather 
 as well as of children. "We ve waited long 
 for it, haven t we, Poccalito?" 
 
 "But I knew it would come and with 
 it, you, pater!" the boy replied. 
 
 "Now that I am come, how are you, chi- 
 quito? How much do you weigh?" 
 
 Poccalito s chin fell, his eye-lids drooped, 
 his voice sank almost to a whisper as he 
 said, apologetically "Only thirty - five 
 pounds." 
 
 "Well, we shall pick up now, the rain 
 is over and you ll be able to get into the 
 sun!" responded the little father, hopefully. 
 
 The two mounted the cart and mince- 
 ingly descended the scraggy hill, freshly 
 furrowed by the recent deluge; then fol 
 lowing the cobble-stoned street, jogged, at 
 a pace as rapid as the nag s capacity per 
 mitted, along the dingy, dilapidated, an 
 cient quarter, known as the Barbary Coast ; 
 through lurid, narrow-laned, red-lanterned 
 Chinatown ; between low, shed-like shops ; 
 past gored blocks, glass-fronted grill 
 
THE AWAKENING OP FOCCAI.ITO 31 
 
 rooms; bay-windowed, balconied clubs and 
 caravanseries ; frowning facades of brown 
 etone, the lone, lifeless mansions of the 
 rich thence to the Old Mission and San 
 Bruno road, that lead to the domain of the 
 dairies and Italian vegetable gardens. 
 
 A noticeable pair was Martinello and 
 Poccalito, seen in the tender solicitude 
 of the elder, the helpless dependence, but 
 deferential devotion of the child a rare 
 combination in a city, conspicuous for its ir 
 reverence toward youth and age; its dire 
 dearth of family life. 
 
 "They ought to kill us off, directly we ve 
 turned fifty!" is the tragic declaration of 
 many an old-timer, who finds himself 
 doomed to the forsaken solitudes, because, 
 in earlier years, he ignored the scriptural 
 injunction to "increase, multiply and replen 
 ish the earth." 
 
 The lorn and loveless lives, that so fre 
 quently end in suicide, in this State of hu 
 man desolation, bear mute but appalling 
 testimony to the evils of individualism. 
 
 Antoine Martinello had grown lean and 
 grizzled in the science of market-gardening, 
 for, when he came with his wife and a col- 
 
32 THE AWAKENING OF FOCCALITO 
 
 ony of immigrants to California, back in 
 the glamorous fifties, his eyes were lustrous, 
 his locks as ringed and jetty, as were those 
 recorded in Holy Writ, which brought de 
 light to the eyes of Judea s daughters, bent, 
 in witching dalliance, toward beauteous 
 Absalom. 
 
 Giovanna, the wife, a simple, un 
 schooled soul, met with injury which 
 terminated in death, by the fall of bricks 
 from a chimney, shattered in a second s du 
 ration, when an earthquake of memorable 
 severity, toppled about all the soot-pots of 
 the section. 
 
 The child, little Antoine, left to the un- 
 tender mercies of volunteered attention, 
 pined and drooped and soon followed his 
 mother, which doleful domestic event left 
 the young husband and father, doubly deso 
 late. It may have been the love born of 
 the union with those clinging souls, that gave 
 Martinello the look which closely reading 
 people called "haunting." Certain it is, 
 that the photography of affection cannot be 
 effaced. Some remnant of it, even upon 
 faces most seamed with vice, remains until 
 the end of life. 
 
THE AWAKENING OP FOCCALITO 33 
 
 Of the things which had wrought the tell 
 tale compassion in his countenance, Mar- 
 tinello gave no sign, other than the whiten 
 ing of his hair, a sphinx-like sculpturing of 
 lips, a settled sadness in his glowing eyes; 
 but, such was the man s unremitting re 
 membrance of his loved and lost, that no 
 woman who bore bundle or baby ever 
 passed his cart on the long country roads, 
 without being graciously invited to ride and 
 rest. 
 
 As this singular escort and his small 
 charge, with each turn of the cart wheels, 
 emerged from the city s thronged arteries, 
 into a purer atmosphere of the less populous 
 slopes, new life as it were, infused the boy s 
 feeble frame. 
 
 Inhaling the myriad scents, borne, sweet 
 and vivifying, from Mother earth, reborn, 
 it would seem, after the copious rains; be 
 holding the glossy skinned herds of Hoi- 
 steins, Durhams, Jerseys, Alderneys and 
 their young, that enlivened the billowy 
 grazing grounds, Poccalito could not but 
 feel, to the depths of his starved heart, not 
 withstanding the hump and the limp, it was 
 
34 THE AWAKENING OF POCCAI.ITO 
 
 good to live, even though he could never be 
 a soldier. 
 
 How cordial the inhabitants of this new 
 wonder land ! The butter-cups and daisies 
 nodded their dainty heads as they passed by. 
 A robin sat on a swaying mustard stalk and 
 saluted; as he sang, thus did Poccalito in 
 terpret the glad carol, "Good morning, 
 little brother! I am glad you are here." 
 
 The industrious sparrows found time to 
 say, "We love you all the better because 
 you are not like other people!" Every 
 streaked, mottled, brown, brindle, or white 
 throat, that lifted from lush leaves where 
 the marsh-mallows bloom, breathed the 
 same gentle salutation. "We are glad you 
 are here, little brother!" 
 
 Where moist, loamy sands make velvet 
 walled nurseries for the seeds and bulbs 
 and roots, that nestle beneath ribbon beds 
 of cresses, artichokes, corn and kindred 
 things among earth s kindly fruits, the pa 
 tient cart horse stopped. 
 
 "While Rhodie has her lunch, we shall 
 have our breakfast; you must be hungry, 
 Poccalito! I am!" said Rhodie s master. 
 
 The crisp, eager air of the morning had 
 
THE AWAKENING OP FOCCALITO 35 
 
 whetted an appetite, customarily torpid, 
 which the lad admitted. 
 
 "A Wayfarer s Rest," situated near the 
 garden s margin, received Martinello s 
 order for raviolis. 
 
 "Raviolis! a feast dish, Carol" exclaimed 
 Poccalito. 
 
 "Well, why not? I want you to get 
 fat and red, so you shall have milk as well, 
 a whole quart if you can drink it and after 
 the raviolis, I have some bananas for you." 
 What a feast! the like of it Poccalito had 
 not until then, known. 
 
 After the breakfast, Poccalito, eager to 
 explore the grounds, hobbled, with as much 
 agility as he could command, about the ar- 
 bored aisles, that served to separate the bean 
 beds from tomatoes, squash vines from peas, 
 parsnips from melons and so on, to the 
 toothsome end. 
 
 Noting the difficulties of pedestrianism, 
 the boy s guardian, ever solicitous, sug 
 gested that he discard his shoes. Where 
 upon, two tiny feet were slipped from the 
 coarse, misshapen old leather that covered 
 them and unshod, unshackled, the child 
 made better his way over the moist ground 
 
36 THE AWAKENING OF FOCCALITO 
 
 and its green, caressing carpet of young 
 leaves. 
 
 Truly, it was a sensation which children 
 cf larger growth may, with profit, expe 
 rience this clasp of our grim but generous 
 old Mother, earth, upon the porous foot 
 soles. 
 
 Let those of aching joints and jaded 
 nerves try the experiment. 
 
 So gratifying did this promenade prove 
 to the little cripple, that even his infirmity, 
 as an ill-fitting mantle, fell away leaving 
 him rejuvenated, beautiful, strong. 
 * * * * 
 
 That night, when the moon lay upon 
 Telegraph Hill, Poccalito, overcome by the 
 realization of one complete day, slept; but 
 not to awaken, rise before the dawn and re 
 sume his accustomed tasks. 
 
 Only a shade more waxen, ashen, 
 wraithy, they found him at break of day, 
 clutching in his talon-like fingers, a bunch 
 of withered poppies; a peace not of earth, 
 upon his rigid countenance, for the feeble 
 life had flown ; and so, with joy, at last, 
 was his awakening wrought. 
 
A MEXICAN HOLIDAY 
 
A MEXICAN HOLIDAY. 
 
 Walls leaden, arched, tiled, chiseleu, 
 balconied, garmented with green; gardens 
 with trees like the elms in a druid forest; 
 fountains splashing in sculptured stone; 
 walks that lead through rainbows of blended 
 bloom; churches domed, spired, bell-hung, 
 furnished with conquestorial trophies; 
 palaces that recall the bastions of Titan 
 homes; lakes shimmering in floods of 
 whitened sunlight; volcanoes wreathed in 
 a purple haze; a chain of encircling moun 
 tains curving and melting into mists of 
 turquoise and gold; streets retrospective of 
 battles, sieges, slaughter, paved with pointed 
 cobblestones, lined with facades of frowning 
 gray, swarming with sad-eyed, swarthy, 
 burden-crossed humanity, clothed in rags, 
 devoured by vermin, clamorous for coin. 
 
 Estamos en Mejicof (We are in Mex- 
 
40 A MEXICAN HOLIDAY 
 
 ico.) Moreover, we are in the ancient 
 Aztec capital "glorious, gory Mexico." 
 
 It was Sunday. A day of feasts and 
 fetes to the rich of triple toil to the task- 
 trammeled poor. 
 
 What should we do, we few forlorn 
 foreigners, sequestered in a strange land? 
 There is no lack of entertainment in that 
 storied city; but, ah! to choose! 
 
 The lovers of the party suggested La 
 Vega. 1 here are gondolas on La Vega, 
 curtained with the national colors, cush 
 ioned with fragrant reeds, steered by skilled 
 craftsmen, withersoe er the stranger wills, 
 in those cypress-shadowed shoals; past the 
 famous floating gardens, redolent with 
 unnumbered roses, beneath lichen-hung 
 bridges and abandoned cause\vays, mutely 
 eloquent of a brilliant, barbaric past. 
 
 Here, too, are beings fantastically ap 
 pareled in feather-woven zarapes and 
 wreaths of poppies ; but La Vega, as a Sun 
 day resort, is not sanctioned by the diplo 
 matic arbiters and so, the gondolas remained 
 moored in their Roman-arched waters that 
 day; at least, so far as one small party of 
 Americanos was concerned. But people 
 
A MEXICAN HOLIDAY 41 
 
 who forswear Venetian barges, foliaged 
 canals, floating gardens and views of crumb 
 ling Casas Grandes must be amused and the 
 edict of this exclusive class is the bull-fight, 
 (though why the butchery of bulls should 
 be more genteel than the beauties of na 
 ture and art, is not apparent) , however, 
 there is contagion in custom. To the Fiesta 
 de Toros we accordingly went. 
 
 There are two Plazas de Toros in the 
 City of Mexico: one in the vicinity of San 
 Cosme, the other near the northern end of 
 the Paseo, that famous, much-frequented 
 boulevard, lined by noble trees, graced by 
 garlanded gloriettas, statued by men cele 
 brated in Spanish and Mexican history. 
 
 A long line of carriages darkened the 
 drive and fluent crowds clustered so closely 
 about the whirling wheels that a collision, 
 at certain stages seemed imminent. Uni 
 formed gendarmes from the Federal Dis 
 trict, with revolvers at their belts and clubs 
 in their hands, succeeded, to some extent, in 
 maintaining order. 
 
 Greasy, wrinkled creatures, clad in 
 untanned skins kept pace with the coaches; 
 they stop and a scramble ensues among 
 
42 A MEXICAN HOLIDAY 
 
 this slimy fraction of the great unwashed, 
 for the honor of swinging open the doors, 
 which secures to them the few centavos 
 expected for this service. 
 
 We are at the Amphitheatre. The 
 crowd thickens; all around it is a perfect 
 hive; ticket speculators are on the alert; 
 they have need of deputies and a hundred 
 hands. Venders of fruit and dukes fill 
 the air with their cries ; water carriers from 
 caverns cool are reaping their harvest; 
 beggars, thieves, destroyers of human con 
 fidence in every form, are making the most 
 of their opportunity. 
 
 There are also guides in ready attend 
 ance, who, for a stipulated sum, will con 
 duct one to those mysterious precincts be 
 hind the barriers, sacred to the gladiators 
 and their associates, thence to the dark en 
 closures where the doomed brutes are con 
 fined. 
 
 Here, too, are their co-workers the in 
 terpreters who profess to translate every 
 language, living or dead; instruct the 
 stranger in the arts of tauromachy, or es 
 cort him to the chapel, where mass is cele 
 brated for the toreros who go there to pray, 
 
A MEXICAN HOLIDAY 43 
 
 confess and be absolved before confronting 
 the bulls. 
 
 Boletos de Sombre (shade tickets) were 
 secured (tiny rolls of tissue paper resemb 
 ling homeopathic powders) and we pass in 
 to the domain of chivalry, as practiced by 
 the Castilian nobles, who likewise welcomed 
 the auto-de-fe and the perfume of burning 
 flesh; yet bull fighting, bloody and brutal, 
 as it may seem to dwellers in Northern 
 latitudes, is an art so intricate and exhil- 
 irating, as to have commanded the attention 
 of the foremost sovereigns of the world. 
 
 Charles V of Spain was an ardent lover 
 of the sport and in the reign of Philip IV, 
 tauromachy was in its zenith. The grand 
 son of Philip II fought with much success 
 in the arena, in emulation of his illustrious 
 ancestor Charles V; but it was a young 
 nobleman named Pedro Romero, who bears 
 the honor of having established the art of 
 tauromachy, as, up to his time, toward the 
 end of the eighteenth century, bull fighting 
 was simply a savage butchery, devoid of 
 that grace of movement and extraordinary 
 skill, which now forms the chief charm of 
 the spectacle. 
 
44 A MEXICAN HOLIDAY 
 
 Pedro Romero compiled for these per 
 formances a set of rules, which became the 
 standard code of the combat, giving at the 
 same time, practical instructions to his con 
 temporaries in the principles of the art by 
 a heroic exposure of his own life, with such 
 effect that his name endures in the annals 
 of the arena, as that of the most illustrious 
 of the espadas of Spain. 
 
 The history of bull fighting in Mexico is 
 but another chapter in this fascinating 
 sport; for there are ladies who dream 
 of it; ministers who neglect their affairs 
 for it; laborers who sacrifice their 
 cigarritos to save a few reales for the 
 day of the fray. 
 
 It begins at three o clock, but long 
 before that hour the amphitheatre is 
 compactly filled, such is the national ar 
 dor. The utmost animation prevails; men 
 and women greet one another joyfully, 
 frantically, after the fashion of the effusive 
 Southern race; fans are fluttered, heads are 
 nodding, arms are gesticulating; the varied 
 colors, the mantillas, shawls, zarapes, par 
 asols, the murmur of many voices, all con 
 tribute to the general gayety. 
 
A MEXICAN HOLIDAY 45 
 
 The amphitheatre, divided by silver sun 
 shine and sepulchral shade, is encircled by 
 seats in boxes, balconies and tiers, priced 
 according to location ; those in the sun are 
 inexpensive and occupied by the poorer 
 classes. 
 
 The arena is similar to a circus ring in 
 the United States, though much larger, en 
 closed by a barrier about six feet high, sep 
 arated by a narrow passage from another 
 barrier, still higher. The first barrier is 
 leaped by the performers, sometimes by the 
 maddened bulls. 
 
 Four roads, nearly equi-distant, lead to 
 the ring: one for the toreros, one for the 
 bulls, one for the horses and one for the 
 heralds of the show. Above the bulls en 
 trance is a balcony, where sit or stand the 
 members of the municipality, who give the 
 signals, blow the trumpets and superintend 
 the ceremony. Each entrance of the per 
 formers is announced. 
 
 A signal from the band first warns the 
 assembled spectators that the exhibition is 
 about to begin. The audience is stilled; 
 the sound of voices is no longer heard ; every 
 eye is dilated and this is what they see. 
 
46 A MEXICAN HOLIDAY 
 
 Six horsemen mounted upon steeds, show 
 ily caparisoned; on their heads are plumed 
 sombreros; at their sides are swinging 
 swords; each wears a short, black mantle; 
 their feet and lower limbs are encased in 
 yellow leather, spurred at the heel. Slowly 
 they make the circuit of the arena; when 
 they take their positions, each face is turned 
 toward the President s box; two by two 
 they halt before the door of the /or/7, still 
 closed. 
 
 The band booms on ; another door opens, 
 another trumpet; it is the signal for the 
 cuadrilla (company of bull fighters). First 
 come the two primas espadas (star bull 
 fighters) dressed with imposing effect. 
 Elaborate embroideries completely cover 
 their closely fitting jackets, short at the 
 back, cut away in front, fringed, tasseled, 
 filagreed at the shoulder; spangles seam 
 their scarlet knee breeches; yellow silk 
 sashes, fringed at the ends, girdle their loins ; 
 flesh-colored silk stockings and satin slippers 
 envelop their shapely extremities; capes of 
 vermilion velvet, richly corded and tasseled, 
 a queue of netted hair, pomponed turban, 
 bound with black fur the toreros Tam 
 
A MEXICAN HOLIDAY 47 
 
 O Shanter completes this striking cos 
 tume. 
 
 After the espadas come the banderilleros 
 and capadores, similarly, but less richly ar 
 rayed; then the picadores on horseback, 
 carrying long lances, wearing buffalo-skin 
 trousers, quilted with strips of iron for 
 protection against the toro s thrusts. The 
 chulos bring up the rear. All are finely 
 formed men compact, sinewy, lithe, with 
 dark faces and large, lustrous eyes; they 
 too, assemble before the President s box, 
 saluting him with the grace of a Chester 
 field. The key of the toril is then dropped 
 into the ring. A guard picks it up and 
 stations himself in readiness to open the 
 door; the espadas separate, the chulos 
 prepare their cloaks, vivid as the first rays 
 of the morning; the banderilleros secrete 
 themselves behind the barriers; the pica 
 dores adjust their lances; again the signal; 
 the door of the toril is flung open. 
 
 A tumultuous shout issues from thous 
 ands of throats, as a black monster, with red, 
 blazing eyes, cruel, crescent horns, thick, 
 ropy neck, pricked and bleeding from a 
 spiked ribbon rosette, shoots into the arena. 
 
48 A MEXICAN HOLIDAY 
 
 Doomed though he be, to butchery, pro 
 longed and ceremonious no prima donna, 
 with the voice of a nightingale and a repu 
 tation international, ever was the recipient 
 of wilder applause. A chulo waves a pro 
 voking cloak; the bull makes a dash at it; 
 in a twinkling the agile chulo is behind a 
 barrier. 
 
 The particular business of these acrobats 
 is to irritate the bull, waving the 
 bright flags in his face. Bewildered, he 
 sweeps upon a picador, and raising him, 
 horse and all, flings him down into the dust. 
 "Bravo, toro!" shout the spectators. 
 "Pobre caballo!" murmured a velvet-eyed 
 senorita near me, behind her fan. 
 
 The Mexicans are a strange mixture of 
 sympathy and cruelty. The pic adores are 
 the first to receive the attack of the bull; 
 with their long lances planted firmly be 
 tween his horns, they attempt to ward him 
 off ; if they do not succeed in planting them, 
 the bull thrusts his horns through the horse 
 and the picador falls with his vanquished 
 steed. 
 
 While the bull is extricating his horns, 
 the cap adores come forward and wave their 
 
A MEXICAW HOLIDAY 49 
 
 capas across his eyes, to attract his attention, 
 causing him to follow them and to save the 
 fallen cavalier, whom the chulos assist into 
 his saddle. If the horse has the strength to 
 stand, he is again attacked and disem 
 boweled; otherwise he remains reeking in 
 his bath of gore, until kindly death comes to 
 his deliverance, 
 
 Of all the participants in this barbaric 
 tournament, none merit so large a share of 
 sympathy as do those spavined, knock-kneed, 
 old, blindfolded, utterly defenseless nags, 
 fated to the most frightful death, without 
 even the ghost of a chance of resistance. 
 
 Man, of all animals, is the only one that 
 preys upon the defenseless. 
 
 They continue to tease him these hu 
 man monsters with their fiery mantles, 
 their seductive costumes, their exquisite 
 agility, their tantalizing tricks ; reeking with 
 rage, he seeks to bury his horns in their 
 flesh but his nimble tormentors are more 
 than a match for him. Not until the signal 
 sounds for their retirement, do they cease 
 their ferocious sport. 
 
 Then the banderilleros appear upon the 
 scene. It is the office of those gentry to 
 
50 A MEXICAN HOLIDAY 
 
 plant barbs in the neck of the bull ; these 
 barbs are about a yard in length, orna 
 mented with parti-colored paper, furnished 
 with a metallic point and so made as to 
 render withdrawal impossible when once 
 stuck into the flesh. The pierced animal, 
 struggling to free himself, only drives them 
 further in. This is most exquisite torture 
 and yet six, eight, sometimes ten pairs are 
 planted, causing the blood to cover the vic 
 tim like a purple shroud. 
 
 The ambition of the banderilleros is to 
 place these prongs evenly and symmetri 
 cally, one on each side of the vertebrae. 
 For this feat, great agility, firm hands and 
 perfect accuracy of eyesight are required; 
 if they fail, they will be pierced like the 
 poor horses. 
 
 The code of Romero decrees that the per 
 formers must stand, not more than fifteen 
 paces in front of the bull, without flag, 
 lance or sword and await the attack; in 
 furiated he rushes at them. As the head is 
 lowered, the banderillero makes his thrust 
 and then steps neatly aside. Now frenzied 
 with resentment, the bull turns upon his 
 tormentors, only to receive another prong in 
 
A MEXICAN HOLIDAY 51 
 
 his palpitating flesh. 
 
 How horrible he is now, with his foam 
 ing nostrils, blazing eyes, writhing tail and 
 reeking back, while above "picture it, 
 think of it" is the tender blue sky and a 
 few fleecy clouds. Here was heinous work 
 in the face of heaven. 
 
 Again the signal! The spectators have 
 been sufficiently entertained by the ban- 
 derilleros; this only is the excuse for their 
 forbearance. It is then that the hero of 
 the hour, the pnma espada, appears upon 
 the scene for the final feat. 
 
 With the dignity of a despot, the apparel 
 of an Asiatic prince, a two-edged toledo 
 blade and a flaming muleta, he advances to 
 the center of the ring, removes his turban, 
 bow r s first to the President, then to the 
 populace, raises his sword, kisses it and in 
 a clear, distinct voice, asks permission to 
 kill the bull. 
 
 "You may fight him," answers the Presi 
 dent. He greets the honored privilege with 
 a gracious smile, a gentle inclination of the 
 head. "One of us must die" he says, with 
 heroic humility which becomes him well. 
 Then he crosses himself and invokes the pro- 
 
A MEXICAN HOLIDAY 
 
 tection of his patron saint ; he has need, for 
 here is an animal of enormous strength, 
 ferocious, bleeding, maddened by prolonged 
 torture, bellowing for revenge and a man 
 seductively dressed, alone, defenceless, save 
 for the sword in his hand. He has need 
 too, of skill, courage, pride, perhaps the 
 prayers that are being breathed for him, 
 for his querida (sweetheart), one at least, 
 is there in the balcony above, with her 
 glittering eyes upon him. The strained 
 glances of thousands are concentrated. Not 
 a voice, not a whisper is heard. 
 
 The audacious espada provokes attack 
 by waving his muleta before the bull, across 
 his very eyes, who dashes at it, fcits the 
 cloth and strikes empty space; he has 
 stepped aside in the nick of time, the horns 
 barely grazing his hip. "Bueno, bueno" yells 
 the sunny side. The shady side contents 
 itself with hand-clapping. The querida in 
 the balcony, snatches the bouquet she wears 
 in her corsage and throws it at him ; more 
 bouquets follow, more hand-clapping; bets 
 are made and money staked. 
 
 The torero has done what man can do in 
 that radiant land to commend himself to the 
 
A MEXICAN HOX.IDA3T 53 
 
 favors of the fair, for these fellows enslave 
 hearts as well as slay bulls. Seven times by 
 the dexterous use of his flag, the espada in 
 vites attack from the goaded beast and seven 
 times, by a dainty movement, he averts 
 death. 
 
 Suddenly he ceases this seeming by-play 
 and takes aim, straight into the great eyes 
 of the wondering animal, stung to the ex 
 tremity of desperation by these varied types 
 of torture; his nostrils emit a vaporous mist, 
 his swollen tongue protrudes, about his 
 hoisted horns and wrinkled neck there is 
 blood blood in blotches, rivulets, wreaths. 
 Every throat is elongated. Opera glasses are 
 adjusted, fans have ceased to flutter. The 
 vast audience, tumultuous in less perilous 
 feats, is now petrified. Again the beast 
 dashes at the man, but this time he does not 
 step by he lifts his sword; it is the coup 
 de grace and it falls in a flash of silver, 
 over the horns lowered for the last time 
 down, down through the quivering flesh, 
 and bloody vertebrae, to the vital spot. At 
 the feet of the conqueror he falls dead. 
 
 It is the supreme expression of physical 
 skill. Then there was a shower of canes, 
 
64 A MEXICAN HOLIDAY 
 
 hats, cigars, flowers, kisses, coin; men 
 shouted, stamped, applauded, wild with de 
 light; women waved their handkerchiefs, 
 mantillas. A hurricane of hurrahs greeted 
 the victorious gladiator, who bows and 
 smiles and poses and rests upon the hilt of 
 his sword, which he has drawn from the 
 wound and wiped with his muleta, torn 
 and smeared by the combat. 
 
 His adversary has fought valiantly, but 
 to the victor belongs the spoils. "Que-so- 
 lo-de?i" shout the populace (give him the 
 bull.) He bows again blandly, with the 
 grateful grace of a Talma; then 
 he stoops and cuts the right ear 
 of the dead animal, that it may 
 be designated from others in the 
 slaughter house hard by and amid vocifer 
 ous, delirious, infectious applause he retires 
 from the arena. 
 
 The band, which has been dispensing 
 rapturous strains, suddenly changes to a 
 dirge for the dead toro, now being drawn 
 out by four mules, showily decorated with 
 tinkling bells, feathers and little flags. 
 
 The most important actor in this bar 
 barous tragedy is then skinned, cut, sliced 
 
A MEXICAN HOLIDAY 65 
 
 and sold, the proceeds of which, in this case, 
 went to swell the receipts of the triumphant 
 matador. 
 
 When six or eight animals are similarly 
 slaughtered; when the arena is scattered 
 with smoking intestines, bones, bits of flesh, 
 blotches of blood and other remnants of the 
 vanquished; when bats and kindred night- 
 birds that lodge in crannies among the 
 loftier altitudes of the amphitheater, have 
 scorched their wings by the flaring lights 
 substituted for the sun after his daily 
 voyage across the beautiful valley is ended ; 
 and the still, white stars look down the 
 show is over. 
 
 Fro?n the "Californian" May, 
 
CHIEF SKOWL S 
 
CHIEF SKOWL S REVENGE. 
 
 A land of myths and mists and mystery; 
 ice-blocked, rock-locked, storm-rocked: land 
 of the alluring moraine and treacherous 
 tundra! The pitiless trail and hungry 
 wolf-pack; of frosts, famine and fever; of 
 vanishing moose, bear and cariboo; of gla 
 ciers ghostly, cloud-lent, tide-rent, sun- 
 blent! Land of the El Dorado, the bo 
 nanza, the blood-red aurora borealis; the 
 rainbow s end, beyond the circle of silence! 
 Alaska! 
 
 Strange, surpassing human ken, would it 
 be, had such land not begotten strong wom 
 en and men. 
 
 In the winter of 1882, there died one of 
 the most remarkable men Alaska has ever 
 produced. This was Skowl, chief of the 
 Eagle clan of the Kaigani, or Haida In 
 dians, who at Kasa-an on the east side of 
 Prince of Wales Island, long held lordly 
 and autocratic sway. 
 
68 CHIEF SEOWL S REVENGE 
 
 Skowl was one of the last of the old 
 school chieftains, ruling his people with 
 the proverbial rod of iron, holding them to 
 their faith and preserving amongst them, 
 the traditions and customs of their fore 
 fathers; he was always an enemy of the 
 missionaries, resisting their encroachments 
 to the end. In his later years Skowl was 
 distinguished for his wealth, obesity and in 
 temperance, as well as for his firmness of 
 character and ungovernable temper when 
 aroused. For many years his weight was 
 considerably more than three hundred 
 pounds. 
 
 As a young man his mental superiority, 
 physical powers, great wealth and family 
 influence gave him much prominence 
 among his people, these qualities and acqui 
 sitions being held in equally as high esteem 
 in aboriginal tribes as they are in civilized 
 circles. 
 
 At the date of Skowl s death, his village 
 held seventeen great lodges and the three 
 score, or more tall and weirdly-carved to 
 tem poles that stood before them, grew- 
 somely testified to the high rank of their 
 builders. These totems constituted the 
 
CHIEF SICOWL S REVENGE 69 
 
 finest collection of the kind in Alaska. The 
 village is now nearly deserted, the people 
 having scattered to the canneries or joined 
 other settlements. The totem poles remain, 
 though decaying, moss-grown and mutilated 
 by alien miscreants, in mute memorial of 
 the traditions of a vanishing race. These 
 emblems are expressive of more than crests 
 and arms of continental noblemen, as they 
 bear, not only the insignia of rank, but the 
 history, in carven stone and wood, of the 
 Indians who own them. 
 
 During the troublesome times of the early 
 American occupation, Kasa-an bay was the 
 theatre of incidents memorable and exciting. 
 One of these formed the subject of a narra 
 tive, related to a number of willing listen 
 ers, myself among them in the cabin of 
 a coast steamer, that regularly furrows 
 those fascinating fjords, channels, inlets, 
 straits in that far-reaching continent of 
 the midnight sun. 
 
 The narrative runneth thus : 
 
 In the summer of 1866 there came, one 
 day, an unfamiliar but friendly boat to the 
 beach of Kasa-an and was straightway 
 landed among the splendid array of canoes 
 
60 CTTTT.T BZOTTL S BEVEJTGZ 
 
 that gave Skowl the finest fleet of well- 
 manned craft then traversing the inland 
 Aslaskan waters. Many times in triumph 
 had they returned through the giant granite 
 gateway that arches the entrance of this 
 harbor of the hostile chief, after dispensing 
 war and wailing to pirates, robbers and 
 marauding bands that trespassed upon the 
 green-watered dominions of this king of 
 the Kaiganeet. 
 
 In the boat was an easy-mannered, per 
 suasive, pliant young Russian, Baronovich 
 by name, who bore gifts to Skowl, of 
 strange device and unknown value, from the 
 distant dominions of the great White Czar, 
 whose faithful subject he claimed to be. 
 Being active, teachable, insinuating and of 
 the stuff that diplomats are made, Barono 
 vich soon Ingratiated himself with the old 
 chief and in time became an inmate of his 
 dwelling, a log cabin of spacious dimensions, 
 guarded, grim and sentinel shrouded, by 
 1 00 IT", \T} * t r> * frrr.- s . 
 
 Smooth talking and tactful, with such ar 
 gument as he was master of, won, ere many 
 moons had aged, the stubborn warrior from 
 his accustomed reserve. By his substantial 
 
CHIEF SXOYTL S BfcVENaE 61 
 
 assistance young Baronovich succeeded in 
 establishing :i flourishing il-hery at the head 
 waters of Karta bay, a score or more ma 
 rine leagues from Skowl s headquarters. 
 With this advance to the dignity of pro 
 prietorship and prosperity, came the aspira 
 tion for closer relations with the chief, rela 
 tions which would secure the adventurer un 
 limited power. This, he knew, could best 
 be effected by the possession of Oolalla, the 
 belle of the region, the idolized and only 
 daughter of Skowl. 
 
 What wonder that Oolalla was univers 
 ally adnured and beloved! She was young, 
 dignified of demeanor, lithe of limb, raven- 
 tressed, clear-eyed, with the bluest of Alas 
 ka s best blood in her veins, the Kaiganees 
 being the flower of the native races. 
 
 There was no lack of suitors among her 
 own race and rank. Numerous blankets 
 and beautifully woven baskets, with rich 
 trophies of the land and sea were laid at 
 her feet, for with tangible offerings, abun 
 dant and marketable, are the maidens of 
 Alaska won. 
 
 Baronovich conformed to the Haidan 
 custom; but when he flung the fruits of his 
 
CHIEF SKOWL S BEVENGE 
 
 arrows, his spear, his nets, harpoons and 
 other implements of the chase, as tribute to 
 the winsome Oolalla, the old chief shook 
 his head ominously and bade the would-be 
 wooer depart with his spoils. 
 
 Alone with the only object of his affec 
 tion, the king of the Eagle clan, in his own 
 terse tongue, questioned the girl. 
 
 "Oolalla, dost thou love the pale-face?" 
 
 "He is to me," answered Oolalla, "as 
 the white moon in the winter night; as the 
 sun in the ice cave; as the rain on the 
 leaf!" 
 
 "The gods forbid it," groaned Skowl. 
 
 But what the fleet deer, surprised in the 
 forested fastnesses of the Fairweather; the 
 sinuous seals that crimsoned the turquoise 
 fathoms of Tolstoi bay with their life-blood 
 and then lay prone at the point of the spear ; 
 what the combined traffic of the tides, the 
 shoals, the hills and the lordly Yukon failed 
 to secure, was accomplished at length by 
 fire-water (brandy) plenteous in quantity, 
 inflammable in quality, distilled by the Rus 
 sian at Karta bay and conveyed to Skowl s 
 retreat at Kasa-an and there distributed in 
 overflowing flagons. 
 
CHIEF SKOWL S REVENGE 63 
 
 It followed that at a certain date record 
 ed in Haidan council chambers, after the 
 midnight sun had sunk behind blood-red 
 bastions of cloud and mountain crest, be 
 yond the cedar-plumed parapets that formed 
 the western wall of this Prince of the Alex 
 andrian archipelago; while the unsuspecting 
 chief, steeped in stupifying draughts, slept 
 on his shaggy skins and the guards were 
 likewise locked in inebriated lethargy; a 
 light canoe, lanterned only by an ivory- 
 horned moon, was loosed from its moorings 
 by Baronovich, who, with Oolalla, swiftly 
 skimmed the silvery surfaces with muffled 
 oars. 
 
 On the opposite shore they were joined by 
 a Russian priest. At dawn, when these 
 twain were made one, by the irrevocable 
 ritual of the Greek Church, the greedy soul 
 of the surreptitious groom was satisfied. 
 He had triumphed at the expense of Skowl. 
 
 For a time all went visibly well. The 
 old chief seemed to accept the situation 
 stolidly, as became one whose plight is ir 
 remediable, though his heart hungered, his 
 blood bubbled for the revenge so sweet to 
 the savage. 
 
64 CHIEF SKOWL S REVENGE 
 
 Baronovich was on the way to becoming 
 a rich man, albeit his sinister nature and 
 avaricious policy prevented the respect and 
 confidence of his bride s people, who con 
 tinued, notwithstanding the changed rela 
 tions, to work with him. He wished to 
 gain money rapidly and was ready to em 
 ploy any means compatible with that pur 
 pose. 
 
 It was Baronovich, who, in 1868, with a 
 small schooner, the propety of Skowl and 
 manned with seal hunters supplied from the 
 chief s village, made a mysterious voyage 
 to the westward and returned with 9000 
 seal skins, thus beginning that shameful 
 pelagic seal killing, or raiding the rookeries, 
 that has diminished their number and caused 
 so much controversy between England and 
 the United States. 
 
 Baronovich was a man- of energy and re 
 sources well qualified for the achievement 
 of what the world calls success. 
 
 After the establishment of his fishery it 
 became the headquarters for smuggling op 
 erations, so rife during the first years of 
 American ownership of Alaskan territory. 
 The harbor was visited by revenue cutters, 
 
CHIEF SKOWL S REVENGE 65 
 
 when warnings were given, but as nothing 
 unlawful could be proven, the place escaped 
 official interference. 
 
 Troubles, however, had begun, which 
 multiplied as time wore on. Skowl s an 
 tagonism, smothered though it had been, 
 was intensified rather than appeased by the 
 passage of time and events. It was Skowl 
 who had staked and outfitted Baronovich, 
 thereby placing him in a position to make 
 money, but Skowl received no portion of 
 the profits, as per agreement, no returns 
 from his hazardous investments. Angry 
 words, threats and quarrels became of daily 
 occurrence, which resulted in the complete 
 withdrawal of Baronovich s forces, who, un 
 der Skowl s command would no longer 
 work for the self-alienated son-in-law. 
 The attempt to bring Indians from other 
 villages to supply their place made matters 
 worse and led to sanguinary encounters. 
 
 At last Baronovich was in despair, his 
 sources of revenue being completely cut off 
 his father-in-law continuing implacable. 
 
 Skowl was not less clever than Baron 
 ovich. Seeing the success achieved by the 
 sealing voyage, he proceeded to outfit a 
 
66 CHIEF SXOV7I/S 
 
 schooner on his own account, imported a 
 captain from Victoria to navigate her, put 
 the same crew aboard, that had served the 
 Russian and was rewarded with equally 
 as great a success. The schooner came back 
 loaded to the scuppers with salted seal skins. 
 
 Then came a period of revelry and re 
 joicing at Kasa-an. Great brewings of 
 hoochinoo, that deadly native spirit dis 
 tilled in old coal oil cans, from yeast and 
 molasses, mixed with flour, which carries 
 more frenzy in each drop than any other 
 liquid under the sun, were freely imbibed 
 by the boisterous Bacchanalians, who knew 
 no phase of holiday save in laxity and li 
 cense. 
 
 Meanwhile Baronovich, at Karta bay v 
 heard the news of the safe return from 
 Behring Sea with the rich cargo of skins; 
 likewise the wild celebration, prolonged 
 without hint of cessation. 
 
 Dark and revengeful thoughts entered 
 his brain, accentuated by fallen fortunes, 
 the paralysis of power, the triumph of his 
 enemies. The green-eyed monster, jealousy, 
 glared in those silent chambers where pride 
 had sat enthroned. Designs deep and in- 
 
CSXEF SKOWLS REVENGE 67 
 
 tricate, brooded, bat-like, beckoning him 
 on to further ventures. Plots, woven with 
 disastrous chances, yet pregnant with cov 
 eted possibilities bewildered, but in the end 
 bore the ashen fruits of action. 
 
 This was his plot. He knew the log hut 
 where the skins would be placed ; he knew, 
 also, that in the heat of the carouse they 
 would not be guarded closely. Calling to 
 gether the few renegade Indians remaining 
 with him, he ordered the launching of a 
 large canoe and with them propelled unob 
 served, to a point not far distant from 
 Kasa-an, there waiting, hidden until the 
 night for the plan s fulfillment. 
 
 The rainy season which causes darkness 
 and thick fog, greatly facilitated their pro 
 ject. 
 
 A little after midnight, the canoe, stealth 
 ily paddled, reached the beach nearest the 
 storehouse; it was, as they anticipated, 
 without locks, bars, or guards. With cat 
 like activity, the work of carrying the skins 
 began and soon the canoe was piled with 
 the costly peltry. Several trips were found 
 necessary for the conveyance of the store. 
 While making the last one they were dis- 
 
68 CHIEF SKOWL S REVENGE 
 
 covered by a stroller on the beach, whose 
 instant outcry peopled the strand with ex 
 cited Indians, all shouting and waving their 
 weapons, but too much surprised and be 
 fuddled with base decoction to act effec 
 tively. 
 
 Baronovich succeeded in launching his 
 canoe, but the load was heavy and the row 
 ers few and so they drifted helplessly in 
 the rain-robed night. The first struggling 
 gleams of the morning revealed the fact that 
 they were followed. In the prow of a craft 
 powerfully manned, stood the gigantic fig 
 ure of Skowl, drunken and distorted with 
 rage, but fluent with imprecations upon his- 
 crafty son-in-law, who struggled frantically 
 in his efforts to escape, but it was a task 
 futilely attempted. Skowl, when close upon 
 him, raised his arm, brandished his spear 
 and cast it with all his strength at Baron 
 ovich; it struck, pinning him to the boat s 
 bottom. 
 
 Skowl gave a yell of exultation, crying 
 out that he never needed to strike an enemy 
 twice. 
 
 Indifferent to the fugitive s immediate 
 fate, as he thought him dead, he ordered 
 
CHIEF SKOWL S REVENGE 69 
 
 the overhauling of the spoils and their re 
 turn to the storehouse whence they were 
 taken. 
 
 Fortunately for Baronovich, the arm of 
 Skowl, unsteady from drink, lodged the 
 spear in his shoulder instead of a more vital 
 part, as had been intended ; though writhing 
 ir. agony, he gave orders to those who com 
 passionately attended him, to steer their de 
 pleted craft back to Karta bay. 
 
 At the fishery Oolalla received her hus 
 band with mingled grief, alarm and fore 
 boding; she knew her father s vindictive 
 nature too well to imagine he would not 
 follow up the work of the morning; her 
 first thought was flight to some other vil 
 lage, but Baronovich, though still alive, 
 was weak and helpless from loss of blood 
 and begged not to be disturbed. Fearful 
 of the vengeance of Skowl, his men had all 
 deserted him and so flight was impos 
 sible. 
 
 Oolalla, alone with her mangled husband 
 and tender infant, had immediate need of 
 the courage bequeathed by her Spartan an 
 tecedents, for her plight was pitiable; her 
 isolation, however, was soon interrupted by 
 
70 CHIEF SKOWI/S BKVENQJG 
 
 a fleet of canoes, steering straight for the 
 fishery landing, crowded with whooping 
 warriors, all on vengeance bent. 
 
 The canoes shot forward and were soon 
 shored. Skowl headed the procession di 
 rected toward the dwelling of the man dis 
 graced. A being of fearful mein he 
 was, with features distorted by rage and 
 revelry, the eagle plumes upon his dishev 
 eled hair wind-rent, his ponderous frame 
 clad in the habiliments of savagery and the 
 weapons of destruction. 
 
 Oolalla, as he approached, barred the 
 doorway with her presence. 
 
 "The thief who has robbed me! Where 
 is he?" shouted Skowl, seeking to shake 
 her aside. 
 
 "Father, what would you do with him ?" 
 shrieked Oolalla. 
 
 "Kill him as I would a wolf that stole 
 my meat," spit the angry assailant. 
 
 "Kill me, if you will, but spare him!" 
 pleaded the tearful and terrified girl. 
 
 "Come home with me, Oolalla," said her 
 father. "You shall be to us as you were 
 before the fox came." 
 
 "Without him never!" was the answer. 
 
CEIEF S3OT7I, S HSV2NGE 71 
 
 The chief entered the dwelling and 
 would have finished by another spear thrust 
 the object of his wrath, who lay fainting 
 in his bed, had Oolalla not snatched her 
 infant from the mat where it lay and held 
 it between its father and her own. 
 
 Skowl had never seen his grand-son, 
 though he had been informed of its ad 
 vent at Karta bay and now he looked at 
 it, with a glance that shifted. 
 
 "Kill it and me!" still pleaded Oolalla 
 "but spare him!" 
 
 He could have done so, with one crunch 
 of his sinewy clasp, as the little brown one 
 lay there in it, limp and dimpling, but at 
 sight of the small face that smiled so confi 
 dently in his, the tears and entreaties of its 
 mother, the suffering man writhing in his 
 bunk, the stony heart of the warrior soft 
 ened and instead of carrying out his pur 
 pose of avenging the wrong perpetrated 
 upon him and the gods of his race, he bade 
 Oolalla return with her child, to his home. 
 
 Then, in his arms, he lifted Baronovich 
 and bore him to a canoe and wrapped him 
 in soft skins and when all were aboard, 
 gave orders for the crow s route to Kasa-an. 
 
72 CHIEF SKOWL S REVENUE 
 
 There, Shamans, or medicine men, the 
 most skilled of the Eagle-totemed tribe, 
 were strictly charged to minister to the 
 sick son-in-law, at peril, if need, of their 
 own lives. Baronovich, natively strong 
 and attended by those twin magicians 
 love and skill soon recovered. 
 
 As long as his benefactor lived, they 
 thereafter dwelt in harmony and the feasts 
 and dances of those last days ef the chief of 
 the Kaiganees, are still famous along the 
 length and breadth of Alaska* 
 
 Thus, with love instead of hate, did 
 Skowl wreak his revenge. 
 
r 
 
 A HEROINE OF DIPLOMACY 
 
A HEROINE OF DIPLOMACY. 
 
 An erstwhile portly porter of the "Sun 
 set Route," who held in his sooty palms 
 if not the destiny of transcontinental trav 
 elers a goodly share, at least, of creature 
 comfort, received upon the occasion of a 
 hurried tour, an unaccustomed tip, as a 
 passenger entered the north-bound Pullman 
 "Pizarro" at Houston, Texas. 
 
 On that mid-August day, the traveler, a 
 lady unattended, was mindful of the smit 
 ing sun, sitting like a ball of flame in the 
 brassy sky; the desert sands, fine as, sifted 
 wheaten flour, that defies exclusion; the 
 stifling noons, the withering winds, the low- 
 hung, languorous moons, that flood the stark 
 spaces of the Lone Star State. 
 
 By reason of these debilitating condi 
 tions, the delicate passenger would re 
 quire iced beverages and stimulating bits 
 from the buffet; blinds must need be 
 
73 A HEROINS OP DIPLOMACY 
 
 drawn, screens adjusted, netting draped, 
 pillows beaten and portieres parted, that 
 the indolent breeze, so vagrantly wafted 
 across the face of that far expanse, might 
 have what sway it would. 
 
 The young lady s necessities, always 
 numerous, were in this instance, augmented 
 by lack of the entourage, which had pre 
 viously accompanied her frequent scam 
 pers across continent and impossible of 
 anticipation, save from the Ethiopians in 
 blue serge and brass buttons, who preside 
 so imperiously over the helpless subjects in 
 their desultory domain "and so" said 
 the gentle passenger, in an indulgent little 
 voice "he will earn his fee." 
 
 She had read of Death Valley, the delu 
 sive mirage, the devastating simoon, border 
 bandits, venemous reptiles, the wild famish 
 ing beasts that roam the arid mesas and the 
 question "Shall I escape those perils?" 
 thrust itself unbidden upon her. 
 
 Since, however, in the glamorous lexicon 
 of youth, courage springs eternal, no hint 
 of horror ruffled the speaker s tuneful 
 voice, as she said, at the threshhold of the 
 "Pizarro" to the black that barred it 
 
A HEROINE OF DIPLOMACY 77 
 
 "Porter may I trouble you to place these 
 parcels?" indicating, at the same time, the 
 presence of a small servitor at her heels, 
 of conspicuous evidence, who struggled 
 bravely under the weight of numerous ap 
 pendages. 
 
 "Here s luggage, as they say in Lunnon. 
 A kit for a minstrel star. What a tramp 
 feeling it gives one to go about like this, 
 alone! But Susanna wouldn t budge! She 
 couldn t be gotten out of Galveston. She 
 had a right, I suppose, to stay with her old 
 mammy if she wished, but it s mighty 
 hard on me." 
 
 This in mental soliloquy. "That is all 
 Skiddy, goodby!" to the boy. 
 
 "Are you the attendant for this coach?" 
 to the porter. 
 
 "Yes, lady." 
 
 "Show me to this section, please!" was 
 the order, given in mild authority, as 
 the proper tickets were displayed. Relieved 
 of bags, bundles, band-boxes, parasols, a 
 camp-stool, umbrellas, a camera, cane, fish 
 ing-tackle, an easel, a caged cockatoo and a 
 banjo in its case, all of which were assigned 
 to the commodious compartment, corre- 
 
78 A HEROINE OF DIPLOMACY 
 
 spending to the numbered tickets, the well- 
 outfitted tourist sank into her cushions 
 with a sense of security, remote indeed, 
 from nightmares of bandits, beasts, or other 
 banes of border lands. 
 
 "Excoose me!" 
 
 It was the porter whose presence jarred, 
 for with an assumption inseparable from 
 the Divine right of sovereigns, the world 
 over, he spoke. 
 
 "I has strict awdahs, lady, not to let no 
 birds nor dogs in heah. I has to take it to 
 de baggage car, right now!" and his big, 
 black eyes rolled resolutely in the direction 
 of the bird s green plumage. 
 
 "Well!" came the response, "If those 
 are official orders I must submit, I suppose, 
 but I m sorry, as she is good company. 
 Don t put her where it is dark, she ll 
 grieve herself to death poor thing! Give 
 her a lump of sugar will you, please?" 
 
 "Pretty Polly good-bye until to-mor 
 row!" was the parting salutation, as the 
 porter, cage in hand, made his exit. 
 
 "Good-bye Nattie!" came the shrill, 
 quavering accents from the talking bird. 
 
A HEROINE OF DIPLOMACY 79 
 
 "I ve gave her de sugah, lady!" an 
 nounced the supple attendant, upon his re 
 turn. 
 
 "Thank you!" replied polly s mistress 
 "I shall appreciate your care of her during 
 this run, since 7 am not permitted ; look in 
 on her every little while, will you? and 
 here s for your bother!" placing, at the 
 same time, a piece of money in his ever 
 open palm "now what shall I call you?" 
 
 "I s Samson, lady, Sam-son Dow, at yoah 
 sahvice and de bird s!" was the answer, 
 with the surrendering suavity of his race 
 and a greedy grip at the coin. 
 
 "Samson! a good name, from the Bible, 
 I suppose you know. Shall I call, if I need 
 anything ?" 
 
 "Suah! lady, or touch dat bell" he 
 designated the wire connection "and I ll 
 come on de run." And Samson, with the 
 unerring intuition of the servile, the illiter 
 ate, accepting the dismissal, vanished, as 
 swiftly and silently as a good darkey 
 should. 
 
 Soon the screech of engines, the clang 
 of bells, the smoke, soot, rattle and roar 
 of a moving train, reminded the traveler 
 
80 A HEROINE OF DIPLOMACY 
 
 that her ride across the valley of desolation 
 was under way. 
 
 Between Houston and San Antonio, 
 there are few stations touched by the 
 "Overland" and these are uninteresting, 
 save to students of the coarser types of 
 humanity. 
 
 In the hovels, shacks, leantoos, wicki 
 ups and similar shifts for human shelter, 
 that wart the wide expanse, herd haggard 
 gamblers, gaunt cowboys, low-set greasers, 
 beseeching beggars, sullen desperados, 
 adventurers and outlaws of all nationali 
 ties, each bent to the same purpose 
 summed up in one word plunder. 
 
 There was little in it, to invite the in 
 terest of refinement and so, our traveler 
 drew her blind to exclude the repellent 
 pictures that avarice, ignorance, selfishness 
 and crime, had imprinted upon the bare 
 face of nature. Since the panoramic scenes 
 were so repugnant, her gaze sought the 
 interior amenities; meeting it, were hang 
 ings, wrought in designs copied from costly 
 tapestries; globes and glass, so stained as 
 to soften the glow of night lamps and the 
 too ardent rays of the sun. 
 
A HEROINE OF DIPLOMACY 81 
 
 Windows of grim embrasure were shut 
 in by thick casements, screened, heavily 
 curtained, rodded, ringed. Fans in palm 
 and bamboo, of mechanism designed for 
 diffusion of the sluggish air, swayed to 
 and fro. Arm-chairs, tables, foot-rests, 
 couches, cushions, pillows, one and all, 
 combined to veil the sun-tanned face of 
 that long, lone land. 
 
 Would she read? Open books were 
 before her, profusely pictured, many of 
 them portraying in fluent English, the 
 marvels of the route over which she trav 
 eled. Anon, her eyes fell tenderly upon a 
 letter of recent date, crumpled, almost 
 ragged, from frequent perusal. 
 
 It was addressed Miss Natalie Breck- 
 enridge, Beach Hotel, Galveston, Texas, 
 and ran thus: 
 
 "HOME, San Francisco, California, August 
 
 MY DEAR CHILD: 
 
 Your telegram recalled me from the red 
 woods, where I have been deer-hunting. 
 Splendid sport, that, among the forest kings, 
 up there between the snows and the sea. Ah ! 
 Nattie, child, could you paint the dawns as I 
 saw them, above the clouds, your old Daddy 
 might cherish the hope of going down to pos- 
 
82 A HEROINE OF DIPLOMACY 
 
 terity with his name written upon the frill 
 of your frock but I won t gush. Why didn t 
 you tell me you needed money? Don t wait 
 until you are broke and then interrupt my 
 dog-days. I left the city to escape such in 
 flictions as letters, dispatches and telephone 
 calls. What in the world are you doing down 
 there in the Lone Star State so long? 
 
 Have you struck oil or a cattle king? 
 
 It s all one I suppose ! In either case, you ll 
 have no further use for me. O! well! What 
 are we old fellows for anyway, except to put 
 up the coin? 
 
 Telegraphed you a hundred dollars, as re 
 quested. Hope you ll use it to come home 
 with. It s lonely there, since however, I m 
 not complaining. If your dear mother had 
 lived, perhaps you would not have so much 
 cared to go about the world. Well ! what 
 ever betides, remember, Nattie, that your 
 mother was noble and your father s house, as 
 Icng as you need it, is yours. 
 
 Paternally, with love, 
 JEROME BRECKENRIDGE." 
 
 "Dear old Daddy I m coming, com 
 ing as fast as steam and wheels will bring 
 me, coming to stay," murmured Nattie, 
 with filial feeling. But, not by the most 
 reassuring of letters, plentiful books, bright 
 hopes and a transcontinental railroad s best 
 service is the soul sustained. 
 
 A sense of isolation, which the sumptu- 
 
A HEROINE OF DIPLOMACY 83 
 
 ous surroundings but served to emphasize, 
 became more oppressive, as the journey 
 progressed ; for, by the bars of gold that 
 emblazoned the Western horizon; by the 
 billowy ridges that seemed to rise, like rose- 
 hued islands, out of the sea of scrubby 
 mesquite and chaparral; by the slim shad 
 ows cast by gaunt trees, the solitary trav 
 eler knew that the day was approaching its 
 close. 
 
 The conductor had made his rounds, 
 punched her ticket, mopped his perspiring 
 brow with a rag of silk, made some com 
 mon-place remark about "Travel being 
 light this hot weather!" and passed on. 
 Then, for lack of anything better to do, 
 crawled into his bunk, 
 
 "What queer people we Americans are!" 
 he muttered in drowsy soliloquy "In 
 no other country on earth would a nice, 
 slip of girl be let go about alone, sleeping 
 on a shelf, eating at the hands of a strange 
 servant but, she s no kin of mine, so 
 why bother? What s that about the per 
 petuity and dignity of a nation depending 
 upon the protection of its virgins? I ve 
 heard or read it somewhere, but can t for 
 
84 A HEROINE OF DIPLOMACY 
 
 the life of me place it," and dazed by 
 the majesty of the sentiment, or enervated 
 by the climate, or both, the man dozed off. 
 
 Samson had served the girl s supper and 
 cleared away the scraps. 
 
 There had been no stops, no passengers. 
 The Pullman was still all her own. Seek 
 ing a window, she saw, by the hurrying 
 twilight, the lean, long-horned, ill-favored 
 kine, that roam those unhindered plains, 
 start, affrighted, at the train s glowing 
 head-light and run, to the shelter of the 
 slanting knolls, for the sake of their poor 
 lives. 
 
 The cranes stalked away, like worn 
 sentinels and then merged into the envelop 
 ing shades. 
 
 The golden bars melted into mauve and 
 turquoise and silver gray. 
 
 The stars twinkled out their evening 
 salutation to the cactus blossoms. 
 
 The wild hens, with strangely plaintive 
 wail, gathered home their wandering 
 broods. 
 
 All things of the desert welcomed the 
 restful dusk. 
 
 Samson" said the psychic student of 
 
A HEROINE OF DIPLOMACY 85 
 
 these mystic forces, when they had, each, 
 merged into a mass, undistinguishable, un 
 fathomable, incomplete 
 
 "Would you mind doing my berth 
 early?" 
 
 "Suh no, lady. Fs not ovah busy!" 
 he replied and with alacrity, proceeded 
 to his task. 
 
 "Escoose me!" he rejoined "Yoah 
 jes bettah let me shet dat win 
 der; the skeeters ll be in heah, a perfect 
 hive; I ll put de wiah screen in ef yoah 
 seys so, but lemme tell yo, chile, it s not 
 ovah safe; we ll be a gwoine thro de bad 
 lands, putty soon." 
 
 "The Bad Lands? Samson!" 
 
 "Didn t yoah nevah hear tell of de 
 Bad Lands, chile, twixt Sanderson and 
 Del Rio? Dat s de place whar thar s ben 
 so many hold-ups. Wy; du yoah know?" 
 and Samson s speech warmed with the 
 consciousness of superior knowledge 
 "I ve knowed em to cut dem wirh 
 screens wid deah bowie-knives an swipe 
 whatevah dey could git; clos , jewelry, 
 shoes, any ole thing, ef dey couldn t git 
 no money. I suh yoah, chile, yoah bettah 
 
86 A HSUOINE OF DIPLOMACY 
 
 let me shet de winder an put down de 
 blin ." 
 
 "The air is heavy here, with all these 
 lamps. Why not put out the lights in 
 some of them? I don t mind a few 
 mosquitoes and dust is preferable to the 
 stifling atmosphere. Surely no harm can 
 overtake us, while we are running at thij> 
 speed! Are we likely to be delayed?" 
 
 "No dey ain t no stops foah Del Rio, 
 but dey s greasers and sich, gropin roun 
 dis yar track, bout sun-down an aftah. 
 Ef any o dat gang seen yoah a settin at 
 de winder, dey d cut de screen, sho nufL" 
 
 "Why Samson! I have nothing with 
 which to tempt a train-robber." 
 
 "Dey don know dat, Honey! dey d 
 tote yoah off, anyhow, if dey could." 
 
 "What dreadful things you put into my 
 head Samson! you make me afraid to 
 stay here alone. Now could you not help 
 me to exchange coaches?" 
 
 "Swap sleepers!" exclaimed Samson 
 "Wy, suah, ef yoah seys so but what 
 foah? Yo s got em all to yoah-seff any 
 how coaches and train; no Nabob dat 
 I helped haul ovah dis yar road evah was 
 
A HEROINE OF DIPLOMACY 87 
 
 bettah bunked. Deys many a one ud like 
 to step into yoah little shoes! Ef yoah 
 was Missus President of de United States, 
 yoah wouldn t have no moah room to yo- 
 seff." 
 
 Having delivered himself of this pent up 
 wisdom, he proceeded to his tasks. They 
 were light and he gave himself leisure; at 
 least he lingered over the single berth 
 longer than absolute necessity required. 
 
 "Samson!" 
 
 It was the prospective occupant of the 
 berth who spoke, at length, after the prep 
 arations for the night were completed. 
 
 The negro turned and faced the speak 
 er. 
 
 "After what you have told me, I am 
 a bit nervous about occupying this sleeper 
 alone to-night. Is there no women aboard, 
 in the tourist section, who might be in 
 duced to come here? I will gladly pay 
 the additional expense, if there be any 
 incurred, for the sake of company." 
 
 "Didn t I done tole yoah, chile, yoah s 
 de only guest on dis yar trip? Dey ain t 
 nobody in de second class; but, bless yoah, 
 Honey, don t be skeered. I s gwoine to set 
 
88 A HEROINE OF DIPLOMACY 
 
 right bar. I don t spec to shet a eye, till 
 dis yar train toddles into El Paso. Now 
 yoah jes go and rest yoh-seff. Nothin 
 ain t gwoine to hurt yoah, es long es yoah s 
 got Samson," 
 
 His size betokened strength; his move 
 ments were those of an athlete, in training 
 for a fight. From a physical point 
 of view, he could, doubtless, had he chosen 
 and opportunity afforded, have slain, as 
 did his herculean predecessor, of Biblical 
 fame, all the refractory forces in Israel; 
 yet, neither his size, strength, apparent 
 training, nor reassuring words were suf- 
 ficent to dispel the apprehensions he had 
 inspired ; and so, with the lowering of the 
 "Pizarro s" lights, the donning of her 
 dream gown, Miss Breckenridge experi 
 enced an especial need of putting in a 
 petition of unusual fervor to her patron 
 saint, for immediate protection. 
 
 With the sweet, reposeful frame of 
 mind which follows the soul s submission 
 to the powers Divine, she slept. A cur 
 rent of cooler air than the desert day had 
 afforded, swept, with the speeding train, 
 through the open window above the 
 
A HEROINE OF DIPLOMACY 89 
 
 girl s berth, as Samson, obedient to her 
 wish, had neither closed nor screened it. 
 
 The full moon flooded with tender radi- 
 ence, a form and face, as fair as that of 
 the celebrated Cenci in her white chamber 
 on the slopes of the palaced Esquiline. 
 
 It must have been "the witching hour 
 of night when churchyards yawn and hell 
 itself breathes out contagion" that the 
 sleeping maiden was suddenly and most 
 singularly startled. Out of the blurring 
 shadow, a black face emerged, which, but 
 for the firey eyes in their white globes 
 swimming, would have been undistinguish- 
 able. Teeth of ghastly gleam were set 
 in a frame of ebony. 
 
 Arms uplifted threateningly, as some 
 foul-winged carrion, whose food is the 
 putrid flesh. 
 
 "Ho! Help! Here! Conductor! 
 Samson!" was the suppliant scream, that 
 pierced the slumberous night. 
 
 Black fingers closed the pallid lips and a 
 muffled voice, close to the girl s bewild 
 ered ears, muttered 
 
 "Look har little white dove. I s not 
 gwoine to hurt yoah." 
 
50 A HEROINE OP DIPLOMACY 
 
 "Why, it s you, Samson!" faltered the 
 dove when she found her voice. "How 
 you frightened me! Have they come? 
 The robbers you told me about? Did 
 they get in through the window while I 
 was asleep? What do they want? money 
 I suppose, or valuables! Here! give them 
 these; they re all I have about me." 
 
 And from her trembling fingers, the girl 
 proceeded to spill into his sooty palms, her 
 few rings, then flung him her small watch, 
 a pearl necklace, wrist bands, chatelaine 
 and leather purse. 
 
 "There! go, now! quickly!" was the quiv 
 ering command. But the brute did not 
 go; he surrendered the valuables; bent, 
 still lower his ebon brows and into the 
 dove s dazed ears, hissed words of unre 
 peatable pollution. 
 
 "Holy Mother Mary defend me!" 
 was the plaintive prayer, as the petitioner 
 leaped into the open window ; but the slime 
 of savage hands was upon her; between 
 her and sudden, sure destruction. 
 
 "I s not gwoine to let yoah kill yoah-seff. 
 What foah yoah want to kill yoah-seff? 
 
A HEROINE OF DIPLOMACY 91 
 
 I won t hurt yoah, chile!" came the sneak 
 ing apology. 
 
 Men, from the privileged, idle, mone5^ed, 
 titled class; to the hireling, depraved and 
 enslaved white or black, profess pro 
 tection for the young, the innocent, the 
 dependent, the weak ; but more merciless 
 than the bullet, the drawn dirk, the pois 
 oned arrow, on the subtle drug, is their 
 form of chivalry. 
 
 Death is at least dignified. It is the 
 royal disposition of certain four-footed 
 beasts, "to prey on nothing that doth 
 seem as dead ;" yet man, who is said to 
 be the flower of civilization, still employs 
 his best brain and brawn in the most 
 ignoble type of destruction. 
 
 The black has learned well the lesson 
 of debasement from his white brother. 
 
 "You will not harm me!" gasped the 
 girl, repeating at length, as in a nightmare, 
 his well worn words; for the fright, heat 
 and horror of the situation, had all but 
 thrown her into a swoon. 
 
 "Turn on the light, then, and see if you 
 can find me a glass of water. How very 
 dark you have made it here!" 
 
92 A HEROINE OF DIPLOMACY 
 
 Faithful to his training, Samson sprang 
 to her bidding, during which interval the 
 young girl pressed the electric button at 
 hand, with the hope of summoning the 
 conductor, who should, by every code of 
 transit, have been hers to command, in 
 case of emergency; but no response to the 
 ring came from out those sullen silences. 
 
 Locked in a limbo unapproachable, that 
 official reposed, for he could not have escap 
 ed the train. To personally summon him, 
 explain, implore his protection, was the 
 only remaining alternative for this fettered 
 dove. A leap from the berth, a stride 
 toward the clattering platform gave 
 prompt expression to this resolve; when 
 lo! the sinister presence! it shadowed, 
 barred the passage completely. 
 
 "I can t let yoah go out dar in de dust 
 and dark; yoah might hurt yo-self; dem 
 little feet was nevah made for de stones; 
 stay har, Honey and go sleep. Yoah don 
 need be skeered. Wy! for all de gold in 
 dis world, Samson wouldn t hurt a hair 
 o yoah head." 
 
 By such empty phrase, did the wretch 
 seek beguilement. With all the angels 
 
A HEROINE OF DIPLOMACY 93 
 
 and ministers of grace, reputed to be hover 
 ing ever above the innocent of this sin- 
 infested sphere, was there no release? 
 
 He, who had warned of bandits and 
 tricks of criminals, was himself the culprit. 
 The maid had need of courage, a firm hand 
 and whatever of strategy she could com 
 mand, for what was her slender strength, 
 to his Samsonian sinews? 
 
 What to him appeal for protection ? 
 
 To a lecherous black blinded by pas 
 sion, these delicate weapons of combat, are 
 as tender rose leaves, in the teeth of a 
 tearing tornado. Not, then, in shriek, or 
 wail, or struggle, denunciation, threat, 
 prayer, or promise of things to come, but 
 in the wily walks of diplomacy, did her 
 deliverance lie. 
 
 Knowing, from having passed her more 
 youthful years in the South, the nature of 
 the negro, a sudden thought, which may be 
 defined as inspiration, illumined this dark 
 scene. 
 
 " My banjo ! " exclaimed the girl 
 "Where did you put it? Bring it. You 
 did not intend to frighten me, did you? 
 I called you, didn t I, to get the banjo, 
 
94 A HEROINE OF DIPLOMACY 
 
 of course; and you came, as my old mam 
 my Hannah used come, tiptoeing in, 
 mornings, before I was awake, lest she 
 disturb me, to bring hot water and brush 
 my clothes. You have found the banjo? 
 Sure! Thank you. Now, we shall have 
 some music; a concert, all by ourselves. 
 I am going to play for you, and sing. / 
 shall sleep no more to-night. This night 
 is your night, Samson!" 
 
 By such hysterical speech was the savage 
 kept in abeyance. 
 
 They were nervous, tense fingers that 
 
 swept the banjo strings and a trembling 
 
 voice that trilled an old negro melody. 
 
 "Nickodemus the slave, was of African 
 
 birth ; 
 
 And was bought for a bag full of gold. 
 He was woolly of pate and plethoric of girth, 
 
 But he died years ago, very old. 
 Twas his last, sad request, 
 
 As they laid him away 
 In the trunk of an old, hollow tree; 
 
 Wake me up was his charge, 
 At the first break of day, 
 
 Wake me up for the great jubilee." 
 
 At the sound of the swelling strain, 
 Samson s face glowed with elation, so 
 sensitive is the Senegambian to the mys 
 tery and magic of music. 
 
A HEROINE OF DIPLOMACY 95 
 
 From plaintive, plantation songs that ap 
 pear vulgar to ears aesthetic, the singer 
 varied her repertoire to nursery rhymes, 
 lullabys, concert hall trills, minstrel echoes, 
 patriotic odes, arias from the comic and 
 grand opera, the Salvation Army s stirring 
 chords, anthems of Mother Church. 
 
 Samson listened, as one in a dream, or un 
 der the spell of some powerful narcotic, for 
 he had never before known so rare a revel. 
 
 The night was indeed his, by the gift 
 of a voice, whose subtle sorcery sent the 
 savage within him away, subdued and 
 ashamed, into the shrouded night. 
 
 Never for one little moment, did the solo 
 ist relax her watch; on, through the long 
 hours assigned for rest, the fierce vigil con 
 tinued unbroken, with only Samson and the 
 wondering night birds of the desert, for 
 audience. More potent than speech was 
 the witchery wrought. What w r onder? 
 
 Was she not singing for what is vastly 
 more precious, than the hoarded treasure 
 of the Incas and Ind, without which life, 
 liberty, wealth, fame, in all the lofty 
 places of this world, are but haggard, hol 
 low, unholy things? 
 
96 A HEROINE OF DIPLOMACY 
 
 Not until the ruby beams of a day new 
 born, began to deck the tawny South 
 lands with daintiest draperies, did this 
 gentle necromancer, yield her well-earned 
 interlude; and then, she saw a Samson 
 shorn of his base strength, a soul whitened 
 
 by the presence of purity. 
 
 ****** 
 
 "Any hold-ups?" asked a brakeman at 
 El Paso, when the all but empty caravan 
 of the desert, arrived on time. 
 
 "Nary" answered the engineer "but" 
 he added "they d have had poor pick 
 ings, with only a woman and parrot 
 aboard." 
 
 Only these! How pitifully small did 
 they count! she, of whom the men spoke, 
 gave no hint of her perilous encounter, but, 
 womanlike, bore the crushing dread of 
 it, with dumb agony and then, as many 
 another has done, passed on. 
 
A SLEUTH OF STOW A WATS 
 
A SLEUTH OF STOWAWAYS. 
 
 Down by San Francisco s sea-wall, among 
 the masts, figure-heads, piers, piles, sails, 
 nets, stringers, coal and coils of cord 
 age, there lives a noticeable and weather- 
 wrinkled man, who has, through many 
 consecutive seasons, propelled a battered 
 boat. 
 
 Captain John Willis, is the name and 
 title of this unique personality, who more 
 frequently answers to "Jack," "Sea-dog," 
 "Wharf-rat" and the "Boatman." Com 
 radeship, by him, is claimed with Commo 
 dore Vanderbilt, which extends back to the 
 early mid-century, when the founder of that 
 famous house, plied his craft to Staten Isl 
 and and recked not of the rank reserved 
 for his descendents. 
 
 Among the duties performed by this erst 
 while associate of a Croesus, are numbered 
 the custody of stowaways. 
 
100 A SLEUTH OF STOWAWAYS 
 
 "I ve ben in this business quite a spell, 
 nigh onto forty year" he said, when I 
 sought him in his accustomed haunts "and 
 I can ginerelly spot a stow." 
 
 When asked to give the benefit of his 
 experience, he did so with characteristic 
 clearness. 
 
 "Different ones" he explained "has 
 different methods. Some hang round the 
 docks days afore a ship sails: there s allus 1 
 somethin hungry and homesick and tired 
 and lonesome lookin about urn . If asked 
 any questions, they say they re jest agoin* 
 to ship, either to the Islands, or Alaska, or 
 Panama or Mexico. Others, agin , speak 
 fur a job, callin theirselves deck-hands, or 
 waiters, or extras; some is not seen till the 
 last rope is histed; then they come hustlin 
 on, as if they had nt had no time to git a 
 ticket. Why! I ve even pulled um out to 
 meet the boat, arter she s clean off into the 
 stream; if the skipper happens to be good 
 natured, he ll slack up and git um aboard. 
 Arter all that bother, I ve brung um back." 
 
 "Who are these people?" I inquired 
 "and why is this method of transportation 
 adopted ?" 
 
A SLEUTH OF STOWAWAYS 101 
 
 "Who are they?" the Sleuth of Stow 
 aways repeated 
 
 "Some is gentlemen, least-wise in looks 
 and talk; some is toughs; some is bums; 
 I ve handled all kinds women, girls, 
 boys, babies without a copper ; all a 
 wantin to git away." 
 
 "Why choose this means?" 
 
 "Ax me a easier one. Why does a sailor, 
 when he s overboard, grip a shingle, or 
 any floatin thing he ken set his fingers on? 
 when folks hav nt got no money, nor work, 
 nor nothin to eat, choice aint in it. Stows 
 is always broke." 
 
 "Do they expect to improve their condi 
 tion?" 
 
 "It s mostly change, they re arter and 
 the hope of gettin a morsel o money. 
 Why! when the Klondike boom was on, I 
 brung in boat-loads of um, slim girls and 
 boys too, headed for the gold fields, with 
 nothin mor n the thin clothes they stood 
 in." 
 
 "What in the world could they do in the 
 gold fields?" 
 
 "Probably as much as they air a doin* 
 
102 A SLEUTH OP STOWAWAYS 
 
 here and there s always the hope uv that 
 morsel o money." 
 
 "How do they manage to get aboard?" 
 
 "O! that s easy enough! nobody knows 
 who s who, the day a boat s gettin out o 
 port. If she s crowded, so much the better 
 fur the stow ; he can hide in the hold with 
 out bein spied. Sometimes they has friends 
 mong st the sailors, or waiters, or passen 
 gers that helps um to hide; then they air 
 in luck. Fact is, any excuse does at the 
 dock, but it s mighty hard fur um to git 
 past the Heads." 
 
 "Yes" I repeated "It is hard to pass 
 the Heads" for Jack s quaint remarks re 
 called impressively an incident of a voyage, 
 unforgettable. 
 
 I had need to rise early, as the "Queen 
 of the Pacific" must be reached by 8 
 o clock. 
 
 I found the wharf thronged with the 
 usual implements of traffic, which included 
 boxes, bales, furniture, lumber, swine, sheep, 
 goats, cows, mules while above all, 
 hummed human voices, unremittingly. 
 
 The decks swarmed with passengers, 
 booked, ticketed, cabined many of them 
 
A SLEUTH OF STOWAWAYS 103 
 
 attended by their friends, who lingered so 
 licitously until the sound of the last gong 
 and final warning "All visitors ashore" 
 precipitated a general scamper. 
 
 The gangway was then withdrawn. The 
 last rope loosed. The screw turned. 
 Showers of kerchiefs, kisses, flowers and 
 good words were wafted from the piers. 
 Music, flying flags, salutes and stirring 
 whistles softened the pangs of parting 
 and we were at last off. 
 
 It was, indeed, a glorious morning. The 
 bay, a molten blaze of many blended hues, 
 bore upon its serene surface, the flags of 
 all nations, above which brooded the white 
 doves of peace. Crafts of every conceivable 
 description swung in the flame-lit fathoms, 
 that laved the feet of the stately hills, then 
 stepping out, one by one, from their gosso- 
 mer night robes, to receive the first kiss of 
 dawn. 
 
 Grim Alcatraz, girdled with bristling 
 armaments, scintillating in the sun, sug 
 gested the presence of some monster 
 leviathian, emerging from the deep, still un- 
 divested of gems, from his submarine home. 
 
 The City s superb eminences, with her 
 
104 A SLEUTH OF STOWAWAYS 
 
 countless spires, domes and minarets against 
 the crimson sky, seemed a temple suited to 
 the abode of Celestials. 
 
 "What a magnificent morning! What 
 splendid pictures! This beats Boston! 
 Naples is nowhere ! Sydney is out of sight ! 
 Telegraph Hill looks a coroneted castle! 
 Angel Island is appropriately named! I 
 wouldn t mind being a soldier, if I could live 
 at the Presidio! Russian Hill tops Bun 
 ker!" were among the ecstatic exclamations. 
 We were within the purple pillared "gate," 
 and so lightly did our big steamer skim the 
 torpid tides that not a ripple whitened the 
 blue. 
 
 A languid little breeze strode in from the 
 sea, scarcely stiffening the stars and stripes, 
 that soared protectingly at our peak. In 
 the offing, a sail, no larger than a heron s 
 wing flitted, then melted away into the 
 mystic world of waters, a reminder that we 
 too would soon be, but a speck in the dis 
 tance, a break in the horizon s hem, and 
 then blankness. 
 
 These and similar meditations were in 
 terrupted by a sudden stop. "What has 
 happened? Why? What? Where? 
 
A SLEUTH OP STOWAWAYS 105 
 
 Who?" flew from lip to lip, but no an 
 swer came from the ozoned depths, nor 
 yet from the startled crew. 
 
 Those, however, who preserved a becom 
 ing composure and were bent to observa 
 tion, might have followed the swift unfurl- 
 ment by a deck hand, of a small flag ; noted 
 a signal from the pilot s bridge; a naked 
 eye could have discerned the approach of a 
 boat in the hands of a practiced sculler, 
 who was soon alongside the Alaskan liner. 
 
 Meanwhile, a rope ladder had been low 
 ered, whither an officer and his aids escorted 
 a shrinking youth, who was gruffly bidden 
 to descend. Listlessly he grasped the sway 
 ing stair; when his feet struck the lower 
 rung, Captain Willis reaching arms re 
 ceived him and limp, faint, mute, dazed, 
 he sank a baffled stowaway into certain 
 custody. 
 
 "Any baggage?" inquired the Captain 
 his gaze directed deckward. 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Any more of um up there?" 
 
 "Wait," was the laconic order given. 
 
 These unexpected developments supplied 
 
106 A SLEUTH OF STOWAWAYS 
 
 a sensation, more or less diverting, to minds 
 receptive. 
 
 Early occupants of the cabins, steeped in 
 slumber, or wrapped in reveries befitting 
 the sublimity of an approaching deep sea 
 voyage, accepted the jarring interruption 
 and forsook their cushioned ease, to court 
 a comfortless curiosity. 
 
 Those of more privileged sequestration, 
 who lingered aft, to drink the glories of 
 the morning, rudely snapped the witcheries 
 wrought by slopes of green that go down 
 to greet the blue; the loops of sun and 
 spray that make radiant rainbows among 
 the granite bowlders ; the reaching estuaries, 
 the foam-flowered shore, the symphonous 
 surf, the soft, velvet-shouldered hills, the 
 salute of the seals, the splendid stretch of 
 sea all were abandoned for the sake of 
 a girl-faced, simple, shamed youth, whom 
 confusion covered, as an ill-fitting mantle. 
 
 The attention he had won, was certainly 
 concentrated, all else for the time being 
 unheeded. 
 
 The stowaway could have claimed com 
 parison with a star actor, who shadows 
 his support and extorts the interest of his 
 
A SLEUTH OP STOW AW AYE 107 
 
 audience. While the stow differed from the 
 star, in that embarrassment was visibly 
 apparent, he had nevertheless, unwittingly, 
 accomplished what myriads seek for, fruit 
 lessly, through years of patient toil; and 
 his audience was not merely interested; it 
 was indulgent; it was sympathetic ; he had 
 awakened what was best in it, therefore the 
 unenviable role was of value to the world. 
 
 One, in that upper assembly, moved by 
 the blessed quality, which makes us all 
 akin, flung, as by irresistible impulse, a 
 nickel, from his perch on the hurricane deck, 
 down on the floor of Jack s wabbly craft. 
 
 "That s for him," shouted the sender, 
 making a conch of one hand, addressing the 
 red-shirted Captain, pointing, at the same 
 time, toward his sullen captive; this proved 
 the cue for more nickels, dimes and larger 
 silver pieces. 
 
 One especially favored cabin passenger, 
 who lolled fetchingly in a fur-draped steam 
 er chair, not so young as she used 
 to be, but still impressionable, rose su 
 perior to her flirtations by dropping a dol 
 lar into the novel collection box; she had 
 
108 A SLEUTH OF STOWAWAYS 
 
 a son, somewhere, she said, with the same 
 sort of kinkey, coppery hair and freckles. 
 
 O ! Mother Nature ! thou art indeed om 
 nipotent ! 
 
 The captive, down there, in his open 
 prison, became, by these ameliorating ad 
 vances, as one transfigured; for he rose im 
 pulsively, from the cross plank that sup 
 ported him, removed his hat and lifted his 
 eyes; tears suffused them, and such scrappy 
 speech as reached us may be thus tran 
 scribed. 
 
 "I thank you friends dear dear 
 friends one and all. I shall never 
 never forget you." 
 
 And so, with blessings, wrenched from 
 the depths of one despairing soul, did our 
 voyage begin. 
 
 "It s a good omen" remarked a furrow- 
 featured man, learned in the lore of winds 
 and tides "luck always follows alms, be 
 stowed the day a ship sails." His words 
 proved prophetic, as a more charming tour 
 among mist islands, set in luminous seas, 
 never weathered the wave. 
 
 "What did you do with the boy?" I 
 asked Captain Willis, jogging his memory, 
 
A SLEUTH OF STOWAWAYS 109 
 
 after my return from the great, white, 
 silent, nightless North. 
 
 "I dumped him off at Meiggs s," was 
 his answer. 
 
 "It s convenienter fur me and a heap 
 suitabler fur the stows; they like a place 
 whar they can hide and not have to be 
 looked at by other folks; there s lots o 
 lumber at Meiggs, which is useful to um, 
 cause it keeps um out o sight, while they re 
 a restin and calculatin on what they re a 
 goin to do." 
 
 "After Meiggs what then?" 
 
 "I cayn t undertake to keep track of all 
 the stows; t would interfere with my other 
 business, ye know; but seys that un to me, 
 seys he." 
 
 "Jack I was broke. I d ben a 
 tryin to git a job and arter knockin 
 round and round, and gettin 
 kicks and cuffs and havin doors slammed 
 in yer face fur days and bein told to move 
 on Wy! say! a kid gits mighty sore and 
 thirsty and hungry; and I seys to myself 
 seys I, nothin can happen, out in the ocean, 
 worse than is bound to happen har and I m 
 goin to take the chances and I did." 
 
110 A fCIiEUTH Or STOWAWAYS 
 
 "What became of him ?" I insisted. 
 
 "Wai! when I sot him on the dock, he 
 had somethin like three dollars gin him 
 from the decks; I chipped in, so s to make 
 it a even five, then I tuk him to a eatin 
 house, whar he had a good breakfast. 
 Then I seys to him, seys I, ride out on 
 the San Mateo road, es fur es the cars 
 11 take ye; then walk to a milk ranch and 
 ask the foreman to give ye a job; and he 
 done so." 
 
 "Well what then?" 
 
 "In about a fort-night er so" continued 
 this oracle "he come to see me an 
 I seys to him, seys I "How goes it?" He 
 seys 
 
 "I got the job all right and might hev 
 stuck it out fur awhile, if I had nt ben so 
 turribly hendered. I had to git up at 2 
 o clock in the mornin to do my milkin ; but 
 that I didn t mind so much as the lone- 
 someness, when everybody else wus sound 
 asleep and the awful dark; t wus 
 the Swiss milkers, tho , that done me the 
 dirt, fur they, seein I wus a new hand and 
 American, had me fired and then they run 
 me off." 
 
A SLEUTH OP STOWAWAYS 111 
 
 "And then" 
 
 "I didn t see him no more, till I hooked 
 him out of the bay." 
 
 "Dead?" 
 
 "Yas um! and what s more part of 
 him gone; by the looks, I reckoned he d 
 ben in the water mebby two days; the 
 crabs had ben at him, but they left him 
 his reddish hair and freckles; that s how I 
 knowed t was him. I s pose he got tired 
 huntin fur a job and gettin turned down; 
 then he done what lots more uv um do 
 jumped overboard! The coroner paid ten 
 dollars fur what was left of his body and 
 it wus took to Potter s, I spose, cause no 
 body claimed him. Ye see, missus, the boy 
 dead, wus worth good dust to the city; 
 alive, he wusn t worth a red." 
 
 What ghastly revelation was this! The 
 dead of more value than the living! By 
 such grewsome reckoning how poor indeed, 
 is life! 
 
 "Do you bring in many?" I asked. 
 
 "Stows is my line, lady, above water, 
 ruther than under it, tho I do handle um 
 both ways. About every day I bring in 
 somebody that wants to git away; and why 
 
112 A SLEUTH OF STOWAWAYS 
 
 do they want to git away? What s the 
 matter with San Francisco?" 
 
 "Yes! What is the matter with San 
 Francicso" I repeated "that the dead is 
 worth more to it than the living?" 
 
 "Wai! ye ken bile it down to this, missus; 
 money s got the sinch here, es every whar 
 else. San Francisco is no place fur them 
 es has stomachs an nothin to put into 
 um. Poor folks had better git away and 
 stay away." 
 
 "But, Captain! where are they to go? 
 Where would they be welcome? Is there 
 a harbor in the world, where people may 
 land without money?" 
 
 The Captain s face lengthened percept 
 ibly, as he said 
 
 "None that ever / shipped to. None that 
 ever / hearn tell of, cept from the parsons 
 and they don t locate the port. Sartin it is, 
 that the stows show to ship is slim. I m here 
 to head urn off and in all ports whar these 
 ships go, there s law agin pauper landin . 
 In Honolulu, every new one has to hav f 
 fifty dollars, or else be took back whar he 
 come from. In Seattle and Tacoma tramps 
 has to go to jail; many a one is brung 
 
A S1.EUTH OP STOWAWAYS 113 
 
 back that hasn t the stuff to shore on ; many 
 a one I ve saved the bother of havin to be 
 brung back." 
 
 "Does it pay?" 
 
 "Who?" 
 
 "You Captain!" 
 
 "Wai! I ve got no kick agin my job. 
 What a man s ben doin fur so many year 
 gits to be sort o second natir , but I want 
 to tell you, right now, there s no money in 
 stows above water; if they wus dead, I 
 might stand a show of gettin rich, cartin 
 urn to the morgue at ten dollars a head." 
 
 "And becoming one of the four hundred 
 and being bidden to a ball of Mrs. Vander- 
 bilt?" was my bold hazard of possibili 
 ties. 
 
 "Yas Cornelius did use to say in the old 
 days when we bunked together "money 
 is what countenances money." As it is, 
 wal! I ain t countin on any thing, more n 
 what the boat brings me in regular" 
 
 The sage boatman was here interrupted 
 by a mysterious signal, unintelligible to me, 
 for he suddenly seized his oars, swung his 
 skiff, doffed his lopsided sou wester and with 
 a deferential 
 
114 A SLEUTH OF STOWAWAYS 
 
 " Scus me please, I must be off!" 
 troughed the tides, at the wharf s outer 
 edge and was soon lost in the lowering 
 fog. 
 
 By which abrupt taking off, the fogs of 
 bewilderment beclouded me ; but from them, 
 swifter than the boatman s swinging 
 scull, flew sympathy for the brother stow, 
 apprehended, out there among the mouvey 
 mists, awaiting, perchance in trembling 
 terror the Sleuth s discovery. 
 
 Dire depression grew with the thought, 
 that a being possessed of all the wealth of 
 pulsing life, is, if moneyless and jobless, 
 counted less in a city s strange economics, 
 than a dismembered corpse, flung up from 
 the noisome depths of the bay, doomed to 
 the Coroner s cart, the slimy slab, the cold 
 scrutiny of the callous and final consign 
 ment to an unidentified pit in Potter s. 
 
TEE STORY OF A CURSE 
 
THE STORY OF A CURSE. 
 
 "I insist that the house now occupied 
 by me be torn down, no one having occu 
 pied it but my own family." 
 
 "Ever since the will of Mrs. Amelia Van 
 Reynegom Pixley, of which the foregoing is 
 a faithful excerpt, was made public, there 
 have, behind fans and above thin-lipped, 
 daintily decorated tea cups, been ominous 
 head-shakes, whispers, brow-lifts, vague con 
 jectures, hints, significent sniffs, sugges 
 tions, sly elbowings and even smothered 
 scraps of scandal, touching what the gar 
 rulous call "wanton desecration," and the 
 more conservative concede to be strange. 
 An atmosphere of mystery, which is another 
 name for morbid fascination, hung about 
 the picturesque premises, which were num 
 bered, long before their destruction, among 
 the haunted houses of San Francisco. 
 
 "Why should a fine, strong house of 
 
118 THE STORY OF A CURSE 
 
 twenty-nine rooms go to the dust heap, 
 when we haven t shelter for our bones?" 
 quaver the aged, the indigent, the out-rid 
 den and down-trodden in life s race. 
 
 Why, indeed! Let the masters of rig 
 orous fate answer. 
 
 "It is outright arson, therefore unlaw 
 ful, this destruction of property;" croak 
 certain legal luminaries, who quote, the 
 while, volubly from the code. 
 
 "What a fine summer resort it would 
 make!" exclaim the fraternal dispensers 
 of a brew that brings ephemeral nepen 
 the, "with all this shrubbery and shade; 
 a few van loads of tables, chairs, steins, 
 goblets, a brass band on holidays and 
 Pixley s would be a blooming oasis for 
 the thirsty multitudes." 
 
 But the property is placed on sale, in 
 lots for building purposes exclusively and 
 so the distributors of soft goods are barred. 
 
 The church of which Mrs. Pixley was 
 a life-long and devout member, nurses a 
 grievance which is likely to remain un- 
 redressed, for it is alleged that the lady 
 intended the ultimate appropriation of her 
 home for a boarding . school, under the 
 
THE STORY OF A CURSE 119 
 
 tutelage of trustees appointed by a Bishop; 
 but, it is quite clear, that this dream of 
 religious and educational endowment came 
 not to tangible consummation. 
 
 Thrifty bonifaces of the publican trend 
 of policy, cast long and covetous eyes upon 
 those hospitably structured precincts, so rich 
 in reminiscences, so adaptable to present 
 conditions; and yet, despite these and all 
 advances, Pixley s remained untenanted 
 after the removal of the original owners; 
 and these, as if loth to leave the scenes of 
 their sublunary activities, still lingered, if 
 reports were to be credited, about the 
 grounds. 
 
 According to reputed testimony, the 
 wraith of Mrs. Pixley frequently appeared 
 in the wooded shades she loved so well. 
 Attaches of her household, trusted servants, 
 who remained in the rambling old mansion 
 after the hammer of leather-lunged auction 
 eers had fallen upon the bronzes, lanterns, 
 vases, jardinieres, Persian rugs, Gobelin 
 tapestries, Bagdad portieres, pictures, 
 swords, statuary, armor, ebonies, candelabra, 
 screens, camphor-woods, silver sets and all 
 that combined to make a rare collection of 
 
120 THE STOBY OP A CURSE 
 
 household gods, tell of tappings and rap- 
 pings, steps stealthy, sudden and untrace- 
 able; whispers, varied by voices heavy and 
 hoarse; laughter that was mirthless and 
 sobs that could not be stilled, in the aband 
 oned ball and banquet hall, w r here Mr. Pix- 
 ley in his years of mental luster and mone 
 tary opulence, held generous and most 
 memorable wassail. 
 
 To the skeptical, this may seern 
 but the sheerest vagary of some hair- 
 brained scamp, who seeks the coin 
 age of filthiest lucre, hatched from a 
 shredded theme; but the more reflective 
 may, from the mention of these ghostly visi 
 tations, glean meat for fruitful meditation. 
 With Prince Hamlet, are we not all 
 moved to the humble acknowledgment, that 
 "there are more things in earth and heaven 
 than are dreamed of in our philosophy?" 
 Should one who has passed to a more re 
 moved place, known to us in days of yore 
 as Frank M. Pixley, now protest at the 
 effacement of his personality, in the home 
 he best loved and builded so exceptionally, 
 what doubting Thomas of the flesh \vould, 
 if he could, withhold from that restless 
 
THE STORY OF A CURSE 121 
 
 entity, the poor privilege of making such 
 sentient expression as is now at his com 
 mand? 
 
 Above all else did Mr. Pixley seek egress 
 from oblivion. To the end that the black 
 night of nihility might be, for a little time 
 postponed, he built chapels, endowed kind 
 ergartens, named public thoroughfares, 
 planted trees, set himself in imperishable 
 print and engraved his name upon the 
 hem of histrionic art. 
 
 An actress contibuted her mite to his im 
 mortality. A town in the County of Tulare 
 was christened in his honor. A male child, 
 not of his blood, bears his name, and is 
 the principal heir to his estate. That the 
 bald, bare, waterless dunes, where he first 
 broke soil on the Pacific peninsula and 
 made to blossom as the fairest rose, now 
 nearly a half century ago, may not con 
 tribute to the perpetuity of his name, was 
 by no means, originally willed by the 
 Argonaut s founder. 
 
 Set like a precious jewel in a 
 wilderness of walls, that garden, with 
 its rare greenery and riotous bloom, 
 brought in tender seedlings, from the 
 
122 THE STORY OP A CURSE 
 
 tropics, the white nurseries of the Alps 
 and the far, frozen shores of stiffened seas, 
 was, to Mr. Pixley a refuge, an oasis, an 
 eden, the beguiling child of his harried 
 age. 
 
 "Preserve it," were his instructions to 
 Mrs. Pixley, who survived him; "make 
 it a public park, children s playground, a 
 sailors rest, camp-meeting grove, a free 
 wash yard for the poor ; anything you will, 
 which may best serve the greater number; 
 but, in the name of God and the vow you 
 made me at the altar, destroy the house; 
 let nothing of it remain. Promise! Your 
 hand on the Book, solemnly." 
 
 And the wife, without question, prom 
 ised. 
 
 How well that promise has been kept, 
 all San Francisco knows. The spectacle 
 of a large force of men engaged in the de 
 struction of property, is so unusual as to 
 make it memorable. Days merged into 
 weeks before the highly polished, curly 
 veined, fragrant woods, from California s 
 giant sequoia forests, which formed the 
 floors and ceilings in that unique dwelling, 
 
THE STORY OF A CURSE 123 
 
 were reduced to fragments, and carted 
 away. 
 
 The crenelated mouldings, fantastic 
 friezes, wainscotings, scrolls, mosaics, 
 pedestals, pillars, mantels, baths, blinds, 
 tiles, lattices, lintels, that, in charred sec 
 tions, went to swell unsightly rubbish heaps 
 in the City of the Doleful Dumps, bore 
 mute and most pathetic testimony, to the 
 strength of Mrs. Pixley s pledge. 
 
 Lest the singularity of the clause in her 
 last testament, which directed the de 
 struction of the dwelling after her death, 
 should subject it to contest and possible 
 revision, the lady made gift deeds of prop 
 erty fronting Green and Steiner Streets, 
 in such manner as to make the house detri 
 mental to the remaining space, this being 
 in accordance with Mr. Pixley s explicit 
 stipulation, that, should the grounds in 
 their sylvan state, hinder the entire efface- 
 ment of the house, they too, must be di 
 vided into lots and sold. Having a brick 
 foundation the dwelling could not be re 
 moved and standing, as it did, in the way 
 of commercial advantage, it could not be 
 let remain and so its doom was inevitable. 
 
124 THE STORY OF A CURSE 
 
 "But why this defacement of beauty? 
 This spoil of precious utility?" is the 
 oft put query. Was it the mere conjuring 
 of a brain distraught, that raved about 
 "a house with a thousand eyes," declaring 
 that "it was haunted, hounded and must 
 be torn down?" 
 
 "If Mr. Pixley had been a poor man he 
 would have passed the last days of his 
 life in a madhouse;" is the statement of 
 his surviving physicians and attendants. 
 Who, save the most psychic of scientists, 
 may presume to decide where sanity ends 
 and insanity begins? That Mrs. Pixley, 
 a woman of exceptionally sound judgment, 
 respected her husband s wishes is proof posi 
 tive of a design, at bottom, more tangible 
 than sentiment, more enduring than the 
 whims of a mind diseased. 
 
 Who ever accused Frank Pixley of being 
 a sentimental man? Since the early fifties, 
 when, as a youthful adventurer, he led 
 his gray mule over untrodden fastnesses, 
 in search of a place to camp and secure 
 unto himself freedom of speech, a human 
 habitation and a name, Mr. Pixley s plans 
 were original, fearless, irrepressible and the 
 
THE STORY OF A CUBSE 125 
 
 final disposition of his effects is in keeping 
 with the eccentricities of his character. 
 
 Dreams he had, though then but in em 
 bryo, of one day becoming a power in the 
 new land of his adoption, by the exercise 
 of his pen. To the end that facility of ex 
 pression might be acquired, it was his habit, 
 each day to record, not merely the actual 
 events of that day, but the thoughts, aspira 
 tions, desires and projects conceived be 
 tween the hours of waking and sleeping. 
 Did he perform manual labor? Each 
 stroke was noted. Did he enter into a busi 
 ness transaction? Each detail was audited 
 in such exactitude as never inked a public 
 ledger. Did he form an acquaintance? 
 The name and scope of it went into the 
 personal records. Did he take a journey? 
 Every moment and mile was incorporated 
 in the journal. 
 
 As his life widened in activity and 
 acquisition, these journals became a 
 subject of care, somewhat more seri 
 ous than their author had in the begin 
 ning, anticipated. What a drawered desk 
 sufficed for, at a circumscribed stage in his 
 career gradually grew to proportions, call- 
 
126 THE STORY OF A CURSE 
 
 ing for much greater space, a certain sys 
 tem and more security of keeping as they 
 were not in their original text, intended 
 for indiscriminate perusal. 
 
 With the evolution of his residence, 
 from two rooms to twenty nine, safes, 
 vaults, closets, cabinets and shelving 
 were constructed, so located and screened 
 by sliding panels, interior decorations, 
 etc., as to evade detection; thus the 
 house came to be literally honey 
 combed with receptacles for private papers. 
 Instead of curtailing those records with the 
 varied activity of business, their author 
 elaborated, the habit having fastened itself, 
 his plan being, eventually, to revise, segre 
 gate and publish them in book form, after 
 his retirement from the journalistic arena 
 a task which would, doubtless, have been 
 accomplished, had he remained to the end, 
 in the full possession of his faculties. Long 
 before he was mentally stricken, however, 
 his pen hand became palsied and he 
 could not successfully dictate. 
 
 Not only were those "confessions" niched 
 in welded walls, rich in personal reminis 
 cences, but they may be said to have con- 
 
THE STORY OF A CURSE 127 
 
 tained much of the private, unpublished 
 history of San Francisco, as the names of 
 his associates figured in them. 
 
 Surviving ones among that sturdy, and 
 alas! fast diminishing company, make the 
 bold assertion that those "confessions" if 
 published would have incriminated, not only 
 their clever custodian, but others upon 
 whom the penalty of celebrity hangs. 
 
 Whether or not this be true, it is safe 
 to presume that they could have furnished 
 themes for absorbing tragedy, comedy, bal 
 lads, sonnets, lyrics and even blank verse, 
 as the scenes which they must have por 
 trayed were among the most picturesque 
 and dramatic, in annals renowned for the 
 scenic and startling in human affairs. 
 
 In those moving incidents Mr. Pix- 
 ley was ever a conspicuous personality, as 
 his political prominence, fearless expres 
 sion, pronounced patriotism; his personal 
 magnetism, the brilliancy of his wit, rail 
 lery and satire, his social status, wealth 
 and wide acquaintance secured for him bit 
 ter enemies, as well as admirers and friends. 
 
 His house at one time, was the Mecca 
 of the literati touring the Pacific Coast. 
 
128 THE STOEY OF A CURSE 
 
 That it was, likewise, sought by persons of 
 sinister purpose, one example among many 
 of vivid memory may serve to illustrate. 
 Under cover of cloud and the night, now 
 many years ago, a spare, bent woman of 
 wintry face and thin hair that made ashen 
 strands in the chill trade-winds which 
 drifted in from the sea, cast her gaunt 
 shadow athwart the Pixley threshold and 
 thus did she deliver herself: 
 
 "Son of Isaac, the apostate Jew, long 
 have I awaited you and now take this. By 
 ill-gotten gains are you here possessed, but 
 they will pass to the property of strangers. 
 No child, in wedlock, will be born to you, 
 but, should seed of yours bring issue, the 
 mark of Cain will be upon it, its death 
 untimely! In the days from which you 
 cannot escape, the friends of your affluence 
 will know you no more. Demented you 
 will die and your bones shall bear no sepul 
 chre! Accursed be the ground beneath 
 your feet! May the God of Israel, whom 
 you have foresworn, deal with you as you 
 have dealt with me and mine! By our 
 ancient and unalterable faith, I demand of 
 
THE STORY OF A CURSE 129 
 
 you, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, heart for 
 
 heart!" 
 
 ****** 
 
 Over in the foothills of Contra Costa 
 County there dwells a lonely woman, long 
 ago by the world forgotten, who avows 
 with convincing vehemence, that this was 
 not the only curse which followed the pale 
 form of Pixley, out where the crimson 
 shroud encircled it, in the white corridored 
 columbarium. 
 
 More vital than vengeance are the 
 issues immured within the breast of 
 this modern Rachael, sitting in sorrow and 
 desolution, mourning for her children and 
 refusing to be comforted because they are 
 not. Those children, the younger Pixley 
 heirs and hers, by the holy rites of love, 
 are removed from her, not by the hand of 
 God but by the more cruel mandate of 
 man. Who is this Rachael, robbed of her 
 children? Who the fierce woman that 
 hurled upon the Pixley portals, such dire 
 and accurate prophecy? Who the apostate 
 Jew? 
 
 A party of Bohemian bards and space- 
 writers sought permission to spend a night 
 
130 THE STORY OF A CURSE 
 
 on the Pixley premises, after they were 
 reputed to have been haunted, but these in 
 offensive folk were rigidly barred. 
 
 Wherefore ? 
 
 After the house lapsed into vacancy, why 
 were artists, writers and every class of 
 journalists refused entrance thereto? The 
 written reams, secreted in shelving behind 
 the sliding panels, could have explained, 
 but, with the hand that penned and pre 
 served them, they have passed into ashes. 
 
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