The night was dark in San Francisco—that city far away on the confines of the Pacific. And far other scenes and other deeds are witnessed there than it ever entered into the imagination of the dwellers on the Atlantic sea-board to conceive of. Description is at fault; words cannot paint the mingled web, and fancy has no colors sufficiently vivid to depict the peculiar state of society in the newly-risen metropolis of California. Naturalists describe the state of the world long before man became a dweller upon the earth, and the fossils which they procure tell of strange animals that once existed here unlike anything which the world now presents.
In Pacific street—named after the ocean that rolls her floods to the very doors of the Californian traders—there are several houses in which congregate the lower class of ruffians and pleasure-seekers, where the tamborene and fiddle are seldom allowed to rest, where the merry dance is kept up the live-long night by men of all nations, all complexions, and all professions. Here may be seen the Lascar, the Mulatto, the Chilean, the Brazilian negro, the Nantucket whaleman, the escaped convict from Botany Bay, the red-faced Englishman, the native of the soil, the Mexican; and every other class and nation is here represented. Men of standing, wealthy people here flock promiscuously with the lowest classes of all countries.
It was in one of these dance halls, where the usual throng was engaged in beating the floor with their feet to the tune of the most simple instruments of music. Now a tall smooth fellow of jet blackness asked a light-haired Yankee to touch glasses with him, while a little infirm man in a blue nankeen jacket, who had once been the mate of a ship, could find nothing better than to explain to a Chinese sailor, in one corner, the way in which a Turk’s head-knot was made upon a rope. But for the most part, boisterous mirth prevailed, some danced as if they had been bitten by a tarantula, while others roared out snatches from such songs as ears polite are not often saluted with.
Whatever was done was thoroughly done, done with a vengeance, without restraint and without fear of disturbing the neighbors.
On the night which we have mentioned, the noise and confusion was unusually great, the throng was more numerous than common from the fact that one watch was on shore from a whaleship in the harbor, and they had all blundered into this hall to drink and be merry.
‘Keep it up!’ cried one long-legged, broad-shouldered fellow, throwing up one of his feet to the very wall and then dancing with a violence that threatened to bring down the roof about his ears.
‘He’s a boatsteerer,’ said one of the ship boys—‘he’s great at striking a whale,’ and he gazed with admiration on this specimen of Nantucket enterprise.
‘Keep it up!’ shouted the boatsteerer making his long legs fly about the room as if he was under the influence of a galvanic battery.
‘Keep it up!’ screamed he again, as he caught a short Englishman by the arm and tried to inspire him with a portion of his own enthusiasm.
‘Yes, yes,’ said the Englishman, biting off the end of a tobacco plug, and walking off to the other side of the room to get out of the wind of those formidable legs.
‘Keep it up!’ bawled the boatsteerer to a couple of Irishmen who happened to enter at the moment; and so it appeared that the sum and substance of all that was in this man’s cranium could be expressed in those simple words ‘Keep it up,’ a phrase that he continued to utter periodically throughout the entire evening.
But neither the Englishman nor the two Irishmen obeyed the summons on this occasion. They had ‘kept it up’ too often and too long to be peculiarly enthusiastic at the sound of a fiddle. The two latter especially seemed to have other matter in hand, and seating themselves upon one corner of a bench near the door, they thus exchanged thoughts in a sotto voice which, in the uproar that prevailed, was completely inaudible to any but themselves.
‘Have you aver seed him since then?’ was the question propounded by the shorter of the two.
‘Faith! and only once, and then I drawed a trigger on him from behind the bush, Patrick, but a lump of a gal com’d out and stood in the way, or I’d kilt him at wunst; but there was no use of getting up a yell from the gal that wud have brought all the payple in the house about my ears.’
‘An’ I b’lieve you are right, Jamie, for them Vigilance Committees is kaping a bright look-out, now, for the like o’that; and I seed one of ’em up in the Boomerang jist when I was cooming down—’
‘Ay, faith, Patrick, and it’s on account of Montgomery that they’re shying around this way, I’m thinking; but they will look a great while before they—’
‘Ah! hush jist now! don’t name it, for yees don’t know what ears is open, if you was only to spake of the sand hills—’
‘Hush, noo, Patrick! would ye be after revaling it all, and we sworn on the howly ’vangellers too?’
‘But as for the Monteagle there, Jamie, there must something be done, for Montgomery swears he’ll have his life, for the taking the safe from him, the bloody robber!’
‘Faith, boy, make yourself parfectly easy, then, for there’s another way to kill a cat besides the putting of a slug into her countenance, sure,’ and Jamie winked sagaciously. ‘You’ll know then that Mister Blodget is going to undertake for him.’
‘Och, thin, don’t you belave the bit of it—one of these gintlemen will never shoot another. Wolf won’t ate wolf—’
‘Niver fear that, boy. It’s not the shooting I’m coming at; but Mr. Blodget is one of ourself, the same as you and I, only it is in a more dacenter way, and didn’t he promise to get him into wosser trouble up at the Bella Union—’
‘Arrah, but when will he cotch him there, think you, and Montgomery all the time perishing, the poor boy, for want of his revinge! And the loss of the safe too that weighs heavy upon his sperrits like a leaden sinker all the time—Och, the bloody robber!’
‘Och! the murtherer,’ cried the other, ‘and didn’t I see the pistol in his hand when he stood up in the barge, and in a minnit Montgomery would have been come to his nat’ril end by foul means, but I jist chucked him under the ear a bit and he lighted down in the bottom of the boat like a breaker full of water.’
‘Bad luck to the likes of him, Jamie, the unspakable murthering scoundrel! It’s the like of him that spoils the counthry entirely, and a poor man like you and me is scragged for trying to get a dacent living in our own way.’
‘Och, botheration! don’t spake to me Patrick, for I’m as mad as my skin can hold now, when I think that I didn’t put the could lead into his bowels, but it was all on account of the slip of a gal that would have given the ala-r-m if I had shot him, jist.’
‘You shot him once, Jamie, and if—’
In Pacific street—named after the ocean that rolls her floods to the very doors of the Californian traders—there are several houses in which congregate the lower class of ruffians and pleasure-seekers, where the tamborene and fiddle are seldom allowed to rest, where the merry dance is kept up the live-long night by men of all nations, all complexions, and all professions. Here may be seen the Lascar, the Mulatto, the Chilean, the Brazilian negro, the Nantucket whaleman, the escaped convict from Botany Bay, the red-faced Englishman, the native of the soil, the Mexican; and every other class and nation is here represented. Men of standing, wealthy people here flock promiscuously with the lowest classes of all countries.
It was in one of these dance halls, where the usual throng was engaged in beating the floor with their feet to the tune of the most simple instruments of music. Now a tall smooth fellow of jet blackness asked a light-haired Yankee to touch glasses with him, while a little infirm man in a blue nankeen jacket, who had once been the mate of a ship, could find nothing better than to explain to a Chinese sailor, in one corner, the way in which a Turk’s head-knot was made upon a rope. But for the most part, boisterous mirth prevailed, some danced as if they had been bitten by a tarantula, while others roared out snatches from such songs as ears polite are not often saluted with.
Whatever was done was thoroughly done, done with a vengeance, without restraint and without fear of disturbing the neighbors.
On the night which we have mentioned, the noise and confusion was unusually great, the throng was more numerous than common from the fact that one watch was on shore from a whaleship in the harbor, and they had all blundered into this hall to drink and be merry.
‘Keep it up!’ cried one long-legged, broad-shouldered fellow, throwing up one of his feet to the very wall and then dancing with a violence that threatened to bring down the roof about his ears.
‘He’s a boatsteerer,’ said one of the ship boys—‘he’s great at striking a whale,’ and he gazed with admiration on this specimen of Nantucket enterprise.
‘Keep it up!’ shouted the boatsteerer making his long legs fly about the room as if he was under the influence of a galvanic battery.
‘Keep it up!’ screamed he again, as he caught a short Englishman by the arm and tried to inspire him with a portion of his own enthusiasm.
‘Yes, yes,’ said the Englishman, biting off the end of a tobacco plug, and walking off to the other side of the room to get out of the wind of those formidable legs.
‘Keep it up!’ bawled the boatsteerer to a couple of Irishmen who happened to enter at the moment; and so it appeared that the sum and substance of all that was in this man’s cranium could be expressed in those simple words ‘Keep it up,’ a phrase that he continued to utter periodically throughout the entire evening.
But neither the Englishman nor the two Irishmen obeyed the summons on this occasion. They had ‘kept it up’ too often and too long to be peculiarly enthusiastic at the sound of a fiddle. The two latter especially seemed to have other matter in hand, and seating themselves upon one corner of a bench near the door, they thus exchanged thoughts in a sotto voice which, in the uproar that prevailed, was completely inaudible to any but themselves.
‘Have you aver seed him since then?’ was the question propounded by the shorter of the two.
‘Faith! and only once, and then I drawed a trigger on him from behind the bush, Patrick, but a lump of a gal com’d out and stood in the way, or I’d kilt him at wunst; but there was no use of getting up a yell from the gal that wud have brought all the payple in the house about my ears.’
‘An’ I b’lieve you are right, Jamie, for them Vigilance Committees is kaping a bright look-out, now, for the like o’that; and I seed one of ’em up in the Boomerang jist when I was cooming down—’
‘Ay, faith, Patrick, and it’s on account of Montgomery that they’re shying around this way, I’m thinking; but they will look a great while before they—’
‘Ah! hush jist now! don’t name it, for yees don’t know what ears is open, if you was only to spake of the sand hills—’
‘Hush, noo, Patrick! would ye be after revaling it all, and we sworn on the howly ’vangellers too?’
‘But as for the Monteagle there, Jamie, there must something be done, for Montgomery swears he’ll have his life, for the taking the safe from him, the bloody robber!’
‘Faith, boy, make yourself parfectly easy, then, for there’s another way to kill a cat besides the putting of a slug into her countenance, sure,’ and Jamie winked sagaciously. ‘You’ll know then that Mister Blodget is going to undertake for him.’
‘Och, thin, don’t you belave the bit of it—one of these gintlemen will never shoot another. Wolf won’t ate wolf—’
‘Niver fear that, boy. It’s not the shooting I’m coming at; but Mr. Blodget is one of ourself, the same as you and I, only it is in a more dacenter way, and didn’t he promise to get him into wosser trouble up at the Bella Union—’
‘Arrah, but when will he cotch him there, think you, and Montgomery all the time perishing, the poor boy, for want of his revinge! And the loss of the safe too that weighs heavy upon his sperrits like a leaden sinker all the time—Och, the bloody robber!’
‘Och! the murtherer,’ cried the other, ‘and didn’t I see the pistol in his hand when he stood up in the barge, and in a minnit Montgomery would have been come to his nat’ril end by foul means, but I jist chucked him under the ear a bit and he lighted down in the bottom of the boat like a breaker full of water.’
‘Bad luck to the likes of him, Jamie, the unspakable murthering scoundrel! It’s the like of him that spoils the counthry entirely, and a poor man like you and me is scragged for trying to get a dacent living in our own way.’
‘Och, botheration! don’t spake to me Patrick, for I’m as mad as my skin can hold now, when I think that I didn’t put the could lead into his bowels, but it was all on account of the slip of a gal that would have given the ala-r-m if I had shot him, jist.’
‘You shot him once, Jamie, and if—’
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