"Would you like to go up 'crazy owld, daisy owld Telegraft Hill'," I
asked in a softened mood as we moved away. "There is just about time."
"Indeed I should," he answered. "Can we take in some of the other things
you archaeologists were mentioning on the way? I don't want to miss
anything."
"We must leave the Parrott and Niantic buildings until some other day,
but you can see the Montgomery Block if you wish," and we turned down
Washington Street. "It was built on piles, by General Halleck's law
firm. William Tecumseh Sherman's bank was nearby, but I suppose most of
Boston's business men were generals-in-chief of the United States Army."
My irony was ignored and as we reached the corner of Montgomery, I
continued: "It was on this spot that James King of William, editor of
the 'Bulletin,' was shot down by James P. Casey, the ballot-box stuffer.
The newspaper office was at the other end of the block on Merchant
Alley, and that evening's editorial accused Casey of electing himself
supervisor and stated that he was an ex-convict from Sing Sing. Within
an hour after the paper appeared, Mr. King was carried dying to his room
in the same building. It was this murder that brought the second
Vigilance Committee into existence. While the immense funeral cortège,
the largest San Francisco has ever known, escorted the body of Mr. King
up this street toward Lone Mountain Cemetery, Casey and Cora, another
criminal, were hung in front of the Vigilance, Headquarters on
Sacramento near Front."
"You called it Fort Gunnybags ?" he queried.
"Yes, it was so named from the precautionary bulwark of sand-filled
sacks piled up in a hollow square in front to protect the entrance. A
bronze plate marked the old building before the fire."
We turned into Columbus Avenue. "Your beloved Stevenson used to live at
No. 8, there on the gore where the Italian Bank is," I said. "We are
coming to the Latin Quarter, a section that has always been given over
to foreigners, for in early days 'Sidneyville,' peopled by
ticket-of-leave men from the penal colony of Australia, and 'Little
Chile' of the Peruvians and Chileans, clustered close around the base of
Telegraph Hill."
"The very place Stevenson would choose, where life was flavored with
history and the mystery of the foreign. But where are you going?" he
exclaimed, stopping short as I began to ascend the steps by which Kearny
Street climbs the hill.
"I thought you wished to see the site of the Marine Signal Station." I
looked down at him from the fourth stair with feigned surprise.
"I do, indeed, but--can't we go up by a funicular and come down this
way?" he compromised. "My Boston calves protest."
"Oh well, we can go by the level a little farther, but I thought you
liked the 'flavor of the foreign.' Anyway, we ought to see Earl
Cummings' old man," I remembered.
"What is his fatherland and his business?" he asked as his eye traveled
over the shop signs "Sanguinetti, Farmacia Italiana," "Molinari &
Cariani, Grocers;" "Oliva & Brizzolara, Real Estate."
"His birthplace is the World Universal, and his profession-leading us
back to nature," I answered. Then, as we passed the spick and span
concrete façade of the Patronal Church of St. Francis, with its rear of
burned brick: "This is the direct descendent of the old Mission," I told
him, "the first Parish Church of San Francisco. It was gutted by the
fire and is being very gradually restored. A notice within administers
an implied rebuke: 'The First Erected--the Last Restored.'"
We paused at the iron fence of the small green triangle cut off from
Washington Square by the slant of Columbus Avenue, and peered at the
fine bronze figure of a sinewy old man stooping to drink from his hand
on the edge of the little pool.
"Mr. Cummings' message to his universal brothers," he commented. "None
could fail to be refreshed by it. My strength is renewed. Let us
ascend," and he turned up Filbert Street.
Dark-eyed women lounged in the doorways of the houses that cling to the
perpendicular sides of the hill. "The Italian pervades," I volunteered,
"but there are Greek, Sicilians, Spaniards and French." The whole was
reminiscent of the South of Europe, but the Neapolitan scene of cleated
walks and steep steps lacked the enlivening color notes of the homeland.
"Not even a red shirt on a clothes line," I regretted, but a flood of
soft voweled Italian from a woman in a third story window, musically
answered by a man in the street below, brought consolation.
"The opera's own tongue," the Bostonian commented.
"Well, you leave it to me," finished the man in the street.
"Sure, Mike, I will," responded the woman.
My companion halted in consternation.
"We make American citizens of them all," I asserted.
"Les petits enfants aussi," I added as a child ran past, shouting a
response in irreproachable English to the Parisian command of her
mother.
We turned through the rude stone wall into Pioneer Park and along the
unkept paths shaded by eucalyptus, cypress and acacia trees and came
upon the open height where the mountain-hemmed bay lay in broad expanse
before us, dotted with islands and with ferries streaking their way
across its blue-gray surface.
"Wonderful," he exclaimed under his breath.
'"O, Telegraft Hill, she sits proud as a Queen,
And th' docks lie below in th' glare,'"