One summer evening, while strolling with considerable difficulty over
Russian Hill, San Francisco, Mr. Grile espied a man standing upon the
extreme summit, with a pensive brow and a suit of clothes which seemed
to have been handed down through a long line of ancestors from a remote
Jew peddler. Mr. Grile respectfully saluted; a man who has any clothes
at all is to him an object of veneration. The stranger opened the
conversation:
“My son,” said he, in a tone suggestive of strangulation by the
Sheriff, “do you behold this wonderful city, its wharves crowded with
the shipping of all nations?”
Mr. Grile beheld with amazement.
“Twenty-one years ago—alas! it used to be but twenty,” and he wiped
away a tear—“you might have bought the whole dern thing for a Mexican
ounce.”
Mr. Grile hastened to proffer a paper of tobacco, which disappeared
like a wisp of oats drawn into a threshing machine.
“I was one among the first who—”
Mr. Grile hit him on the head with a paving-stone by way of changing
the topic.
“Young man,” continued he, “do you feel this bommy breeze? There isn’t
a climit in the world—”
This melancholy relic broke down in a fit of coughing. No sooner had he
recovered than he leaped into the air, making a frantic clutch at
something, but apparently without success.
“Dern it,” hissed he, “there goes my teeth; blowed out again, by
hokey!”
A passing cloud of dust hid him for a moment from view, and when he
reappeared he was an altered man; a paroxysm of asthma had doubled him
up like a nut-cracker.
“Excuse me,” he wheezed, “I’m subject to this; caught it crossin’ the
Isthmus in ’49. As I was a-sayin’, there’s no country in the world that
offers such inducements to the immygrunt as Californy. With her fertile
soil, her unrivalled climit, her magnificent bay, and the rest of it,
there is enough for all.”
This venerable pioneer picked a fragmentary biscuit from the street and
devoured it. Mr. Grile thought this had gone on about long enough. He
twisted the head off that hopeful old party, surrendered himself to the
authorities, and was at once discharged.