steamer that, aside from the regular crowd of loungers who make their
appearance confessedly only to look on, there are others who take
advantage of the slightest intimacy to go through the leave-taking
formula. People whom you have quite forgotten, people to whom you have
been lately introduced, suddenly and unexpectedly make their appearance
and wring your hands with fervor. The friend, long estranged, forgives
you nobly at the last moment, to take advantage of this glorious
opportunity of “seeing you off.” Your bootmaker, tailor, and
hatter--haply with no ulterior motives and unaccompanied by official
friends--visit you with enthusiasm. You find great difficulty in
detaching your relatives and acquaintances from the trunks on which
they resolutely seat themselves, up to the moment when the paddles are
moving, and you are haunted continually by an ill-defined idea that
they may be carried off, and foisted on you--with the payment of their
passage, which, under the circumstances, you could not refuse--for the
rest of the voyage. Your friends will make their appearance at the most
inopportune moments, and from the most unexpected places,--dangling from
hawsers, climbing up paddle-boxes, and crawling through cabin windows at
the imminent peril of their lives. You are nervous and crushed by this
added weight of responsibility. Should you be a stranger, you will find
any number of people on board, who will cheerfully and at a venture take
leave of you on the slightest advances made on your part. A friend
of mine assures me that he once parted, with great enthusiasm and
cordiality, from a party of gentlemen, to him personally unknown, who
had apparently mistaken his state-room. This party,--evidently connected
with some fire company,--on comparing notes on the wharf, being somewhat
dissatisfied with the result of their performances, afterward rendered
my friend's position on the hurricane deck one of extreme peril and
inconvenience, by reason of skilfully projected oranges and apples,
accompanied with some invective. Yet there is certainly something to
interest us in the examination of that cheerless damp closet, whose
painted wooden walls no furniture or company can make habitable, wherein
our friend is to spend so many vapid days and restless nights. The sight
of these apartments, yclept STATE-ROOMS,--Heaven knows why, except it
be from their want of cosiness,--is full of keen reminiscences to most
Californians who have not outgrown the memories of that dreary interval
when, in obedience to nature's wise compensations, homesickness was
blotted out by sea-sickness, and both at last resolved into a chaotic
and distempered dream, whose details we now recognize. The steamer chair
that we used to drag out upon the narrow strip of deck and doze in,
over the pages of a well-thumbed novel; the deck itself, of afternoons,
redolent with the skins of oranges and bananas, of mornings, damp with
salt-water and mopping; the netted bulwark, smelling of tar in the
tropics, and fretted on the weather side with little saline crystals;
the villanously compounded odors of victuals from the pantry, and oil
from the machinery; the young lady that we used to flirt with, and with
whom we shared our last novel, adorned with marginal annotations; our
own chum; our own bore; the man who was never sea-sick; the two events
of the day, breakfast and dinner, and the dreary interval between; the
tremendous importance giver, to trifling events and trifling people; the
young lady who kept a journal; the newspaper, published on board, filled
with mild pleasantries and impertinences, elsewhere unendurable; the
young lady who sang; the wealthy passenger; the popular passenger; the--
[Let us sit down for a moment until this qualmishness, which these
associations and some infectious quality of the atmosphere seem to
produce, has passed away. What becomes of our steamer friends? Why are
we now so apathetic about them? Why is it that we drift away from them
so unconcernedly, forgetting even their names and faces? Why, when we
do remember them, do we look at them so suspiciously, with an undefined
idea that, in the unrestrained freedom of the voyage, they became
possessed of some confidence and knowledge of our weaknesses that we
never should have imparted? Did we make any such confessions? Perish the
thought. The popular man, however, is not now so popular. We have heard
finer voices than that of the young lady who sang so sweetly. Our chum's
fascinating qualities, somehow, have deteriorated on land; so have
those of the fair young novel-reader, now the wife of an honest miner in
Virginia City.]
--The passenger who made so many trips, and exhibited a reckless
familiarity with the officers; the officers themselves, now so
modest and undemonstrative, a few hours later so all-powerful and
important,--these are among the reminiscences of most Californians, and
these are to be remembered among the experiences of our friend. Yet he
feels, as we all do, that his past experience will be of profit to him,
and has already the confident air of an old voyager.
As you stand on the wharf again, and listen to the cries of itinerant
fruit venders, you wonder why it is that grief at parting and the
unpleasant novelties of travel are supposed to be assuaged by
oranges and apples, even at ruinously low prices. Perhaps it may be,
figuratively, the last offering of the fruitful earth, as the passenger
commits himself to the bosom of the sterile and unproductive ocean. Even
while the wheels are moving and the lines are cast off, some hardy
apple merchant, mounted on the top of a pile, concludes a trade with
a steerage passenger,--twenty feet interposing between buyer and
seller,--and achieves, under these difficulties, the delivery of his
wares. Handkerchiefs wave, hurried orders mingle with parting blessings,
and the steamer is “off.” As you turn your face cityward, and glance
hurriedly around at the retreating crowd, you will see a reflection of
your own wistful face in theirs, and read the solution of one of the
problems which perplex the California enthusiast. Before you lies San
Francisco, with her hard angular outlines, her brisk, invigorating
breezes, her bright, but unsympathetic sunshine, her restless and
energetic population; behind you fades the recollection of changeful,
but honest skies; of extremes of heat and cold, modified and made
enjoyable through social and physical laws, of pastoral landscapes,
of accessible Nature in her kindliest forms, of inherited virtues, of
long-tested customs and habits, of old friends and old faces,--in a word
of HOME!
NEIGHBORHOODS I HAVE MOVED FROM
I.
A bay-window once settled the choice of my house and compensated for
many of its inconveniences. When the chimney smoked, or the doors
alternately shrunk and swelled, resisting any forcible attempt to
open them, or opening of themselves with ghostly deliberation, or when
suspicious blotches appeared on the ceiling in rainy weather, there was
always the bay-window to turn to for comfort. And the view was a fine
one. Alcatraz, Lime Point, Fort Point, and Saucelito were plainly
visible over a restless expanse of water that changed continually,
glittering in the sunlight, darkening in rocky shadow, or sweeping in
mimic waves on a miniature beach below.
Although at first the bay-window was supposed to be sacred to myself
and my writing materials, in obedience to some organic law, it by and by
became a general lounging-place. A rocking-chair and crochet basket
one day found their way there. Then the baby invaded its recesses,
fortifying himself behind intrenchments of colored worsteds and spools
of cotton, from which he was only dislodged by concerted assault, and
carried lamenting into captivity. A subtle glamour crept over all who
came within its influence. To apply one's self to serious work there was
an absurdity. An incoming ship, a gleam on the water, a cloud lingering
about Tamalpais, were enough to distract the attention. Reading or
writing, the bay-window was always showing something to be looked at.
Unfortunately, these views were not always pleasant, but the window gave
equal prominence and importance to all, without respect to quality.
The landscape in the vicinity was unimproved, but not rural. The
adjacent lots had apparently just given up bearing scrub-oaks, but had
not seriously taken to bricks and mortar. In one direction the vista was
closed by the Home of the Inebriates, not in itself a cheerful-looking
building, and, as the apparent terminus of a ramble in a certain
direction, having all the effect of a moral lesson. To a certain extent,
however, this building was an imposition. The enthusiastic members of
my family, who confidently expected to see its inmates hilariously
disporting themselves at its windows in the different stages of
inebriation portrayed by the late W. E. Burton, were much disappointed.
The Home was reticent of its secrets. The County Hospital, also in range
of the bay-window, showed much more animation. At certain hours of the
day convalescents passed in review before the window on their way to
an airing. This spectacle was the still more depressing from a singular
lack of sociability that appeared to prevail among them. Each man
was encompassed by the impenetrable atmosphere of his own peculiar
suffering. They did not talk or walk together. From the window I have
seen half a dozen sunning themselves against a wall within a few feet
of each other, to all appearance utterly oblivious of the fact. Had they
but quarrelled or fought,--anything would have been better than this
horrible apathy.
The lower end of the street on which the bay-window was situate, opened
invitingly from a popular thoroughfare; and after beckoning the unwary
stranger into its recesses, ended unexpectedly at a frightful precipice.
On Sundays, when the travel North-Beachwards was considerable, the
bay-window delighted in the spectacle afforded by unhappy pedestrians
who were seduced into taking this street as a short-cut somewhere else.
It was amusing to notice how these people invariably, on coming to the
precipice, glanced upward to the bay-window and endeavored to assume a
careless air before they retraced their steps, whistling ostentatiously,
as if they had previously known all about it. One high-spirited young
man in particular, being incited thereto by a pair of mischievous bright
eyes in an opposite window, actually descended this fearful precipice
rather than return, to the great peril of life and limb, and manifest
injury to his Sunday clothes.
Dogs, goats, and horses constituted the fauna of our neighborhood.
Possessing the lawless freedom of their normal condition, they still
evinced a tender attachment to man and his habitations. Spirited steeds
got up extempore races on the sidewalks, turning the street into a
miniature Corso; dogs wrangled in the areas; while from the hill beside
the house a goat browsed peacefully upon my wife's geraniums in the
flower-pots of the second-story window. “We had a fine hail-storm last
night,” remarked a newly arrived neighbor, who had just moved into the
adjoining house. It would have been a pity to set him right, as he
was quite enthusiastic about the view and the general sanitary
qualifications of the locality. So I didn't tell him anything about the
goats who were in the habit of using his house as a stepping-stone to
the adjoining hill.
But the locality was remarkably healthy. People who fell down the
embankments found their wounds heal rapidly in the steady sea-breeze.
Ventilation was complete and thorough. The opening of the bay-window
produced a current of wholesome air which effectually removed all
noxious exhalations, together with the curtains, the hinges of the back
door, and the window-shutters. Owing to this peculiarity, some of
my writings acquired an extensive circulation and publicity in the
neighborhood, which years in another locality might not have produced.
Several articles of wearing apparel, which were mysteriously transposed
from our clothes-line to that of an humble though honest neighbor, was
undoubtedly the result of these sanitary winds. Yet in spite of these
advantages I found it convenient in a few months to move. And the result
whereof I shall communicate in other papers.
II.
“A house with a fine garden and extensive shrubbery, in a genteel
neighborhood,” were, if I remember rightly, the general terms of an
advertisement which once decided my choice of a dwelling. I should add
that this occurred at an early stage of my household experience, when I
placed a trustful reliance in advertisements. I have since learned
that the most truthful people are apt to indulge a slight vein of
exaggeration in describing their own possessions, as though the mere
circumstance of going into print were an excuse for a certain kind of
mendacity. But I did not fully awaken to this fact until a much later
period, when, in answering an advertisement which described a highly
advantageous tenement, I was referred to the house I then occupied, and
from which a thousand inconveniences were impelling me to move.
The “fine garden” alluded to was not large, but contained several
peculiarly shaped flower-beds. I was at first struck with the singular
resemblance which they bore to the mutton-chops that are usually brought
on the table at hotels and restaurants,--a resemblance the more striking
from the sprigs of parsley which they produced freely. One plat in
particular reminded me, not unpleasantly, of a peculiar cake, known
to my boyhood as “a bolivar.” The owner of the property, however, who
seemed to be a man of original aesthetic ideas, had banked up one of
these beds with bright-colored sea-shells, so that in rainy weather
it suggested an aquarium, and offered the elements of botanical and
conchological study in pleasing juxtaposition. I have since thought
that the fish-geraniums, which it also bore to a surprising extent, were
introduced originally from some such idea of consistency. But it was
very pleasant, after dinner, to ramble up and down the gravelly paths
(whose occasional boulders reminded me of the dry bed of a somewhat
circuitous mining stream), smoking a cigar, or inhaling the rich aroma
of fennel, or occasionally stopping to pluck one of the hollyhocks with
which the garden abounded. The prolific qualities of this plant alarmed
us greatly, for although, in the first transport of enthusiasm, my wife
planted several different kinds of flower-seeds, nothing ever came up
but hollyhocks; and although, impelled by the same laudable impulse, I
procured a copy of “Downing's Landscape Gardening,” and a few gardening
tools, and worked for several hours in the garden, my efforts were
equally futile.
The “extensive shrubbery” consisted of several dwarfed trees. One was
a very weak young weeping willow, so very limp and maudlin, and so
evidently bent on establishing its reputation, that it had to be tied up
against the house for support. The dampness of that portion of the house
was usually attributed to the presence of this lachrymose shrub. And
to these a couple of highly objectionable trees, known, I think, by the
name of Malva, which made an inordinate show of cheap blossoms that they
were continually shedding, and one or two dwarf oaks, with scaly leaves
and a generally spiteful exterior, and you have what was not inaptly
termed by our Milesian handmaid “the scrubbery.”
The gentility of our neighbor suffered a blight from the unwholesome
vicinity of McGinnis Court. This court was a kind of cul de sac that,
on being penetrated, discovered a primitive people living in a state of
barbarous freedom, and apparently spending the greater portion of their
lives on their own door-steps. Many of those details of the toilet which
a popular prejudice restricts to the dressing-room in other localities,
were here performed in the open court without fear and without reproach.
Early in the week the court was hid in a choking, soapy mist, which
arose from innumerable washtubs. This was followed in a day or two later
by an extraordinary exhibition of wearing apparel of divers colors,
fluttering on lines like a display of bunting on ship-board, and whose
flapping in the breeze was like irregular discharges of musketry. It was
evident also that the court exercised a demoralizing influence over the
whole neighborhood. A sanguine property-owner once put up a handsome
dwelling on the corner of our street, and lived therein; but although
he appeared frequently on his balcony, clad in a bright crimson
dressing-gown, which made him look like a tropical bird of some rare
and gorgeous species, he failed to woo any kindred dressing-gown to the
vicinity, and only provoked opprobrious epithets from the gamins of the
court. He moved away shortly after, and on going by the house one day,
I noticed a bill of “Rooms to let, with board,” posted conspicuously on
the Corinthian columns of the porch. McGinnis Court had triumphed. An
interchange of civilities at once took place between the court and
the servants' area of the palatial mansion, and some of the young men
boarders exchange playful slang with the adolescent members of the
court. From that moment we felt that our claims to gentility were
forever abandoned.
Yet, we enjoyed intervals of unalloyed contentment. When the twilight
toned down the hard outlines of the oaks, and made shadowy clumps and
formless masses of other bushes, it was quite romantic to sit by the
window and inhale the faint, sad odor of the fennel in the walks below.
Perhaps this economical pleasure was much enhanced by a picture in my
memory, whose faded colors the odor of this humble plant never failed to
restore. So I often sat there of evenings and closed my eyes until the
forms and benches of a country schoolroom came back to me, redolent with
the incense of fennel covertly stowed away in my desk, and gazed again
in silent rapture on the round, red cheeks and long black braids of that
peerless creature whose glance had often caused my cheeks to glow over
the preternatural collar, which at that period of my boyhood it was
my pride and privilege to wear. As I fear I may be often thought
hypercritical and censorious in these articles, I am willing to record
this as one of the advantages of our new house, not mentioned in the
advertisement, nor chargeable in the rent. May the present tenant, who
is a stock-broker, and who impresses me with the idea of having always
been called “Mr.” from his cradle up, enjoy this advantage, and try
sometimes to remember he was a boy!
III.
Soon after I moved into Happy Valley I was struck with the remarkable
infelicity of its title. Generous as Californians are in the use of
adjectives, this passed into the domain of irony. But I was inclined to
think it sincere,--the production of a weak but gushing mind, just
as the feminine nomenclature of streets in the vicinity was evidently
bestowed by one in habitual communion with “Friendship's Gifts” and
“Affection's Offerings.”
Our house on Laura Matilda Street looked somewhat like a toy Swiss
Cottage,--a style of architecture so prevalent, that in walking down the
block it was quite difficult to resist an impression of fresh glue and
pine shavings. The few shade-trees might have belonged originally to
those oval Christmas boxes which contain toy villages; and even the
people who sat by the windows had a stiffness that made them appear
surprisingly unreal and artificial. A little dog belonging to a neighbor
was known to the members of my household by the name of “Glass,” from
the general suggestion he gave of having been spun of that article.
Perhaps I have somewhat exaggerated these illustrations of the dapper
nicety of our neighborhood,--a neatness and conciseness which I think
have a general tendency to belittle, dwarf, and contract their objects.
For we gradually fell into small ways and narrow ideas, and to some
extent squared the round world outside to the correct angles of Laura
Matilda Street.
One reason for this insincere quality may have been the fact that the
very foundations of our neighborhood were artificial. Laura Matilda
Street was “made ground.” The land, not yet quite reclaimed, was
continually struggling with its old enemy. We had not been long in our
new home before we found an older tenant, not yet wholly divested of
his rights, who sometimes showed himself in clammy perspiration on the
basement walls, whose damp breath chilled our dining-room, and in the
night struck a mortal chilliness through the house. There were no patent
fastenings that could keep him out,--no writ of unlawful detainer that
could eject him. In the winter his presence was quite palpable; he
sapped the roots of the trees, he gurgled under the kitchen floor, he
wrought an unwholesome greenness on the side of the veranda. In summer
he became invisible, but still exercised a familiar influence over the
locality. He planted little stitches in the small of the back, sought
out old aches and weak joints, and sportively punched the tenants of the
Swiss Cottage under the ribs. He inveigled little children to play
with him, but his plays generally ended in scarlet fever, diphtheria,
whooping-cough, and measles. He sometimes followed strong men about
until they sickened suddenly and took to their beds. But he kept the
green-plants in good order, and was very fond of verdure, bestowing
it even upon lath and plaster and soulless stone. He was generally
invisible, as I have said; but some time after I had moved, I saw him
one morning from the hill stretching his gray wings over the valley,
like some fabulous vampire, who had spent the night sucking the
wholesome juices of the sleepers below, and was sluggish from the
effects of his repast. It was then that I recognized him as Malaria,
and knew his abode to be the dread Valley of the shadow of
Miasma,--miscalled the Happy Valley!
On week days there was a pleasant melody of boiler-making from the
foundries, and the gas works in the vicinity sometimes lent a mild
perfume to the breeze. Our street was usually quiet, however,--a
footfall being sufficient to draw the inhabitants to their front
windows, and to oblige an incautious trespasser to run the gauntlet of
batteries of blue and black eyes on either side of the way. A carriage
passing through it communicated a singular thrill to the floors,
and caused the china on the dining-table to rattle. Although we were
comparatively free from the prevailing winds, wandering gusts sometimes
got bewildered and strayed unconsciously into our street, and finding
an unencumbered field, incontinently set up a shriek of joy, and went
gleefully to work on the clothes-lines and chimney-pots, and had a good
time generally until they were quite exhausted. I have a very vivid
picture in my memory of an organ-grinder who was at one time blown into
the end of our street, and actually blown through it in spite of several
ineffectual efforts to come to a stand before the different dwellings,
but who was finally whirled out of the other extremity, still playing
and vainly endeavoring to pursue his unhallowed calling. But these were
noteworthy exceptions to the calm and even tenor of our life.
There was contiguity but not much sociability in our neighborhood.
From my bedroom window I could plainly distinguish the peculiar kind of
victuals spread on my neighbor's dining-table; while, on the other hand,
he obtained an equally uninterrupted view of the mysteries of my toilet.
Still, that “low vice, curiosity,” was regulated by certain laws, and
a kind of rude chivalry invested our observation. A pretty girl, whose
bedroom window was the cynosure of neighboring eyes, was once brought
under the focus of an opera-glass in the hands of one of our ingenuous
youth; but this act met such prompt and universal condemnation, as an
unmanly advantage, from the lips of married men and bachelors who didn't
own opera-glasses, that it was never repeated.
With this brief sketch I conclude my record of the neighborhoods I have
moved from. I have moved from many others since then, but they have
generally presented features not dissimilar to the three I have
endeavored to describe in these pages. I offer them as types containing
the salient peculiarities of all. Let no inconsiderate reader rashly
move on account of them. My experience has not been cheaply bought. From
the nettle Change I have tried to pluck the flower Security. Draymen
have grown rich at my expense. House-agents have known me and were glad,
and landlords have risen up to meet me from afar. The force of habit
impels me still to consult all the bills I see in the streets, nor can
the war telegrams divert my first attention from the advertising columns
of the daily papers. I repeat, let no man think I have disclosed the
weaknesses of the neighborhood, nor rashly open that closet which
contains the secret skeleton of his dwelling. My carpets have been
altered to fit all sized odd-shaped apartments from parallelopiped to
hexagons. Much of my furniture has been distributed among my former
dwellings. These limbs have stretched upon uncarpeted floors, or have
been let down suddenly from imperfectly established bedsteads. I have
dined in the parlor and slept in the back kitchen. Yet the result of
these sacrifices and trials may be briefly summed up in the statement
that I am now on the eve of removal from my PRESENT NEIGHBORHOOD.
MY SUBURBAN RESIDENCE.
I live in the suburbs. My residence, to quote the pleasing fiction of
the advertisement, “is within fifteen minutes' walk of the City Hall.”
Why the City Hall should be considered as an eligible terminus of
anybody's walk, under any circumstances, I have not been able to
determine. Never having walked from my residence to that place, I am
unable to verify the assertion, though I may state as a purely abstract
and separate proposition, that it takes me the better part of an hour to
reach Montgomery Street.
My selection of locality was a compromise between my wife's desire to
go into the country, and my own predilections for civic habitation. Like
most compromises, it ended in retaining the objectionable features of
both propositions; I procured the inconveniences of the country without
losing the discomforts of the city. I increased my distance from
the butcher and green-grocer, without approximating to herds and
kitchen-gardens. But I anticipate.