The Fantastic City

San Francisco has a vivacious past, all color and high lights, and some of the glamour of that other age, which was just yesterday in history, still hangs about her. It was part of my youth. As a young bride in the eighteen fifties, I first knew the sparkling life of the new city: a fantastic city tossed together on sand hills, where I lived for many years to see it grow and finally vanish in the metropolis which stands now, with a certain pride of power and beauty, at the Golden Gate.

The California I knew had little to do with covered wagons. These rarely reached the lower coast lands of the Pacific, being bound for the mines and farming country of the mountains. San Franciscans came from the East and South by water — by way of Panama or around the Horn. Sons of Virginia and Carolina families were business and professional men of the day, with others from New England and New York come West for fortune or the sheer zest of living in a new land. Those who had brought or sent for their families lived in attractive homes, however unimpressive they were externally; two-story houses of brick or frame, with iron balconies or long Southern galleries, that were ranged along Stockton Street and scattered over the hills, each with its garden.

Later there were stately, beautiful houses. South Park and Rincon Hill with its gardens might have been set in a city of old social tradition. In these something of the legendary hospitality of Spanish days blended, with that of the old South represented by so many families, into a manner of living indescribably generous and delightful, distinctively Californian.

This overlay the life of the streets and gambling-halls and all the drama of adventurous youth and reckless beauty that gave San Francisco its fantastic charm.

It was like some extraordinary play in a theater when I stepped into it from the quiet New England ways of our home and a year of living abroad. Now when I recall it I know that an original and vivid phase of American life passed when old San Francisco burned in 1906, with its foreign quarters, strange bazaars, and gay restaurants. But principally the verve of youth it had, with a pervading joyousness, made it unique among cities. No one was poor. Every one was happy. We lived at the rainbow's end and its colors shimmered about us.

My father [Colonel Leander Ransome] went to California soon after the first gold rush to establish land surveys for the Federal Government, and it was decided that in his absence my mother and I should visit relatives in England. We sailed from New York for Liverpool on July 9, 1851, passengers on the Pacific of the Collins Line, sister ship to the Atlantic which had brought Jenny Lind to America that year.

The Pacific would look like a tender to one of the modern leviathans of the ocean, but we thought her very grand. Staterooms were all below deck opening on a grand salon and were considered the last word in luxury of travel, each with its strip of crimson carpet, white woodwork, and washbowl and pitcher held in place with firm braces.

Of our wardrobes I remember a tippet and muff of ermine lined with blue silk with which I expected to dazzle Mayfair, and white Swiss party gowns suitable for a very young girl. Mother always wore silk — soft plaid taffetas, black, and sometimes bottle-green with black lace flounces; a flowing black silk cloak lined with fur for traveling. In our trunks were many muslin petticoats, the starch all washed out of them for packing, but to be restarched in London to hold our skirts to a proper flare. Hoops were not yet 'in.'

We sat at the Captain's table and dressed for dinner on the Pacific, and after dinner gathered with fellow voyagers in the round-house, a place of many windows on the upper deck where passengers met in a friendly fashion long since lost to trans-Atlantic travel. Our diversions were primitive. I make no apology for them to young moderns. We asked conundrums, and all joined in singing songs. 'Juanita'was a favorite. Our riddles I've forgotten. Doubtless 'Who was the father of Zebedee's children?' was one of them.

A humorous gentleman with flowing side-whiskers would invent and propound elaborate posers, and when, after profound thought, some one would say, 'I give it up. Why is a rose tree like a nightingale?' — he would blandly answer, 'I don't know that it is,' which sent us into gales of laughter. Mrs. Deane, a pretty little bride, played the guitar and led the singing, or tried to; for singers would break into groups, each group starting its own selection, with a resulting choral chaos we found hilariously amusing. At the close of the evening we would all follow Mrs. Deane in the Canadian boat song, 'Row, Brothers, Row,' which we thought appropriate for an ocean voyage.

There were always to be met, traveling in those days, fragile, fluttering females who went out of fashion with crinolines — the sort that had 'the vapors' at slight provocation. One of these drove our amiable Captain Nye distracted. 'Oh, Captain, do you think it will rain?' she would ask. Or, 'Oh, Captain, shall we have a storm?' — until one day we did have a storm and Mrs. Flutterby was prettily terrified. 'Oh, Captain!' she cried, waylaying him, 'do you think the ship will sink?'

'Yes, ma'am. She'll sink to hell in ten minutes,' Captain Nye replied, with grim finality, and went on his way, leaving her silenced and uncertain.

The eleven days' crossing seemed short to me. Indeed, it was short for the eighteen-fifties. The Pacific was an ocean greyhound in her day which was to have a tragic end. She was lost a few years afterward, struck by an iceberg, it was believed. No word ever came from her or any soul on board. Our Captain Nye had retired then. Captain Asa Eldredge went down with the Pacific.

My aunt came from her English country home to meet us in London and we took a house for the season, an especially gay season because of the Great Exhibition lately opened by the Queen and Prince Albert in Crystal Palace. There were dozens of visiting royalties with lesser dignitaries from foreign lands, and an endless succession of parties. I was far too young for these, but longed to be in the gay rush of things and my aunt conspired with me. She suggested that I be presented at court for no year could be more auspicious and another season might find us back in America. It was our opportunity, she insisted, and mother was finally won over. I was tall for my age and with my hair done up could easily pass for seventeen.

Thus it happened that I reveled in balls and low-cut gowns — but not too low — all a joyous experience for a girl scarcely out of the schoolroom. In fact, there were still morning lessons in London when they could be arranged. I can still see the London ballrooms — with frescoed walls all Cupids and flowers, and chandeliers hung from the rosy sky of ceilings — filled with long-vanished dancers; gentlemen with side-burns, young ladies in full-skirted frocks garlanded with flowers or lace flounces, whirling decorously in the waltz. Only the toes of our slippers showed when we danced.

Chaperons were everywhere; banked at the end of a ballroom or in the small reception rooms that overflowed with them. They never danced, but chaperoned faithfully and sleepily to the end in an amiable, detached sort of way that interfered not in the least with many light flirtations and a degree of serious romance. For I remember pale young ladies of whom it was said they had been disappointed in love. Occasionally one went into a decline over an unhappy heart affair; or it was told of some flashing beauty that she had jilted young So-and-So, an unmaidenly performance generally condemned. It was a reprehensible thing to encourage suitors one had no thought of marrying and one must be careful to give a gentleman no hope if indeed there were none. Naturally these discretions barred friendships with men for any really conscientious girl, and naturally we sometimes agreed that married women had all the fun.

Yet, in spite of handicaps of manners and dress, we had a gorgeous time in the days of my youth. We were quaint and old-fashioned, but we did not know it then.

Consider our gloves. A lady never walked or drove abroad without them and they must be buttoned before she stepped out of her door. 'Always finish your toilet before you leave the house,' my mother told me. 'You would not think of buttoning your basque as you walked down the street. You should no more think of buttoning your gloves in public.' We sat through long evenings in them at the theater and danced all night without uncovering our hands. One-button gloves which left the arms bare were not bad, but when eight- and twelve-button gloves came in, they could be a trial, yet, imposed by fashion and etiquette, one to be borne as a matter of course.

Being 'presented' was an event approached though long anticipation. There was the excitement of fittings for gowns, and gathering all of the paraphernalia — slippers, feathers, and what-not; and for days mother and I practiced the curtsy, sweeping the length of our drawing-room trailing tablecloth trains, kissing my aunt's hand to get the proper bend.

On the great day we drove to St. James's Palace, sitting very straight in the carriage with furbelows all arranged just so. But we might have relaxed, for furbelows were all disarranged in the crush at the palace doors. I was finally shot though, my gown torn by the spurs of army officers and my bare arms scratched by their epaulettes. We were all in evening clothes, of course, although it was three in the afternoon.

A little preening and we approached the final portals. I gave my card to some one who thundered forth my name — the Lord Chamberlain he was — and started across the great room toward a group of royalties in richly colored gowns and glittering uniforms.

The Queen smiled and laid her plump little hand on mine and I brushed it with my lips as I curtsied low. The thought of the power that little hand represented, signing what historic decrees — raised in a gesture of negation heeded around the world, made me a little dizzy as I kissed it.

Genuflections to other royalties, and then I backed toward the door of egress praying that my train would follow me decently. Trains were great spreading things, in those days, far more difficult to direct in a turn than the narrow, trailing scarfs of later fashion.

Safely through the door, I had time to remark many dignified gentlemen in knee breeches trying to look unconscious of their costumes, and many elaborate ladies with plunging plumes, happily conscious of theirs. But it was brief reward for weeks of preparation, I thought, and we really had a better view of the Queen at the Crystal Palace, one day.

Mother and I had gone to the Great Exhibition, to see the American Display, and were depressed to discover it principally coffins and carriages. Funereal, we found it, and wandered idly over to the French concession. There an awed circle stood staring at the Queen. The center of a royal group, she was examining machinery with excellently feigned interest. She was pretty, I thought, with her large eyes, amiable expression, and the flowered bonnet tied under her chin. The little Prince of Wales and the Princess Royal, who was to be Empress of Germany and the Kaiser's mother, were with her. Victoria Adelaide was then ten years old, but full of dignity. The little Prince was more engaging. Both dutifully regarded the machinery.

I have no other vivid memory of the Great Exhibition save that of its closeness and heat. It was all under glass, in a sort of mammoth conservatory, and only hothouse plants could have long survived its atmosphere. Spectators simply wilted, and fainting ladies were carried out to revive on the lawns. But there is another vivid memory of the Queen: We were driving in Hyde Park late one afternoon when word was given that the royal equipage would pass and carriages in the long procession all drew to one side. Two outriders in scarlet livery came first, pacing grandly down the avenue, then two lords-in-waiting, also on horseback; following these the Queen's carriage, an open landau in which she sat, smiling, with Prince Albert at her side. He had not yet been given the title of Prince Consort. Her carriage passed very close to ours and she flashed her friendly smile at us while Prince Albert touched his hat. I thought her lovely, that day. She surely had great charm in her youth, and was exceedingly pretty in her white muslin dress with tiny rosebuds embroidered all over it. A white lace scarf hung about her shoulders, and her white tulle bonnet had rosebuds on it. She carried a white parasol. All this I noted with wide, eager eyes, and also the fact that Prince Albert was a very handsome prince. Just behind the landau were two more lords-in-waiting, then two more scarlet outriders, and the royal cavalcade had passed.

Victoria and Albert were all that a queen and a prince should be, I thought, but how shocked I was at first sight of one of the great English country houses! 'Knowsley,' seat of the Earl of Derby who was then Prime Minister, was my disillusionment. Stately and grand without, but within — well, naturally, having seen mansions of University Place in New York I expected something very fine, much more elegant than these; and found, instead, something distinctly shabby. Threadbare carpets, worn upholstery, and dingy hangings. Poverty-stricken, it all looked to me, and it was several visits later before I could reconcile the slightly dilapidated dignity of many of these places with my American ideas of how earls and dukes should live.

In a round of country-house visits, one was at the home of the Duncombes of Duck, a great house in a park where life was lived formally. Family prayers began the day. Guests were expected to be in the library at nine o'clock for this ceremony, and when we were all assembled, the servants entered, butler, housekeeper, footmen, maids, and valets, with maids and valets of guests, all in strict order of precedence. We made an imposing congregation. Solemnly Sir Philip read a passage from the Bible and made a prayer. Then the servants withdrew and we considered breakfast.

At the Duncombes', I think it was, we met Comte de Lintivie, French Consul-General in London, and his Comtesse, who is one of the figures impressed on my memory for no important reason whatever. She was large and florid and was followed everywhere by a small white poodle whose name was General Tom Thumb. 'Venez ici, Tum Tum,' were the only words I ever heard her say, and whenever she moved she thus addressed Tom Thumb.

Another unforgettable lady was the elderly songstress who would seat herself at the piano after dinner and tragically intone, 'Rome, Rome, Thou art no more as thou hast ben,' until I shook with smothered mirth, though no one else found it amusing.

Picnics were among our pastimes, and the Duncombes' coaches, with four perfectly matched horses for each, would swing up to the main entrance about eleven in the morning. Servants with hampers of food would be stowed inside while we climbed on little stepladders to the seats on top. Some favored belle would be invited to sit next the driver, who was usually one of the guests noted for his horsemanship.

Picnics were always near a waterfall. There was an inexhaustible supply of waterfalls in the English countryside; and before some sweetly purling brook tumbling over a height of fifteen feet, our friends would unfailingly ask, 'How does it compare with your Niagara?'

At Alnwick Castle, home of the Duke of Northumberland, archery was a popular diversion. I had a rosewood bow with blue velvet over the part held in the draw. It was a pretty sport, with feathered arrows, and large white targets striped with red set against the green of the park. We played much croquet, too, and in the late afternoons women's wide skirts swept daintily over the lawns after bright-colored balls. Men had a mean advantage in croquet. They would bend at an angle of fifty degrees to give the ball an effective whack. Women's figures, all properly whale-boned, had more a Leaning Tower of Pisa slant, and naturally with their superior flexibility the men scored.

The May-Day garden party at Alnwick Castle was an elaborate fête. Villagers did a Maypole dance and we all tripped the polka on the lawn. Under an oak tree a village maiden milked her cow for the syllabub we drank. This was warm milk mixed with wine or cider and highly thought of as a beverage.

We danced the redowa a great deal that year, and quadrilles, of course, with 'Salute your partners' and 'Grand right and left.' But the polka was a favorite with every one because elderly gentlemen could polka nicely if the waltz baffled them, and young people put a dash and verve into it impossible in other dances.

I am aware now that in this year of grace, while I was carelessly going to balls in London and dancing on English lawns, Carlyle was writing masterpieces in Cheyne Row, and gathering material for his 'Frederick the Great.' D'Israeli sauntered across the literary scene as he did through the life at Court. The Brownings, having eloped and lived for a time in Italy, came back to London for a visit. Thackeray was dining with his friends, the Brookfields, and gave a party for Charlotte Brontë when she came from her North Country home to see the Great Exhibition. In Devonshire Terrace, where we sometimes passed, Dickens was writing 'Bleak House.'

It was the year the new poet laureate, young Alfred Tennyson, brought his bride to London to live, and Herbert Spencer published 'Social Statics,' which his friend, Miss Marian Evans, later known as George Eliot, praised highly. I might have seen them together at a performance of 'Merry Wives of Windsor' in Drury Lane, but, alas, I did not. I was all unaware of their existence. Of all these things I had then no knowledge.

For, as a matter of dreadful fact, reading was not fashionable in the eighteen-fifties, and the literary world was quite distinct and far removed from the beau monde.

Young ladies were not encouraged to be bookish. There were female freaks called 'blue-stockings' who were given to study and much reading, and no one wanted to be classed with these. I can think of no modern term so filled with polite opprobrium as 'blue-stocking.' A girl who liked 'heavy' books kept her failing very secret. We were not unintelligent, merely retarded. And of course there were brilliant women in society and many well-read men. I am speaking of the eighteen-fifty jeune fille.

When the season in London was over, many of the fashionable set who owned estates in Ireland would cross for the Dublin season which came later. No country in Europe had then a gayer court than that at the Irish Capital, and in Ireland I had the happiest time of my stay abroad, and met the most charming people. The Irish are so lovable and friendly, so generous in their hospitality.

With my aunt we took a house in Merrion Square after a short stay at the Gresham Hotel in Sackville Street, and Dublin proved a city of delight for me. My first dinner party was at Beaumont, the home of Mr. Arthur Guinness, head of the brewing firm, an old gentleman of courtly manner who was greatly revered. A daughter, Lady Waller, presided over her father's home which had been hers since her mother's death, and she was hostess at the dinner party of which I recall gold plate and an épergne of gold in the center of the table.

The charities of the Guinness family have always been generous, and a number of years later, Mr. Guinness's two grandsons were elevated to the peerage for their benefactions, as Lord Ardilaun and Lord Iveagh. His son, their father, was Mr. Benjamin Guinness, then Lord Mayor of Dublin, and we dined with him at Mansion House on several occasions.

Another son, Mr. Arthur Lee Guinness, had the most enchanting home I have ever known, Stillorgan Park, a short drive from the city, where we passed delightful weekends. The long, low house covered with ivy was set in a park with lovely gardens and a winding avenue that ended in a circular gravel space at the front entrance. One stepped into a restful, beautiful court with broad stairways sweeping upward on either side, and in the center a fountain fringed with growing plants. Always in the afternoon a blind harper, with white beard and flowing white hair, sat over at one side of the court and sang old melodies while he played an Irish harp.

To the right of the court a small reception-room led to the grand salon paneled in carved oak, with a great fireplace half-circled by many comfortable seats. A Chinese room on the opposite side of the court was hung with embroidered silks and filled with beautiful things — carved teak, ivories, and bronze gods. This was used for a ballroom and from it opened the conservatory filled with flowers.

Mr. Arthur Lee Guinness was a bachelor, and his cousin, Mrs. O'Gready, presided over his home. She was very fat and merry and could dance a marvelous jig. With her brother she would dance for us, stepping lightly for all her weight, her wide black satin skirt held a little high on either side. Mrs. O'Gready always wore black satin, décolleté in the evening, and high-necked for day wear, and her own hair was covered by a spirited yellow wig. Every one adored Mrs. O'Gready.

There was an informal program for week-end parties at Stillorgan. We arrived about four on Saturday afternoon, driving out from Dublin, and then dressed for the six o'clock dinner. This was served in the Chinese room, since the dining-room was too small for many guests, and a score of others, beside the week-end visitors, would be present to remain for music afterward and a late supper. Sundays we all went to church. Luncheon followed, then drives, strolls about the grounds, or letter-writing. We wrote many letters before the days of telephones and telegraph.

Sunday evenings at Stillorgan we spent about the great fireplace in the salon and every one contributed to the entertainment. The men told anecdotes, and we sang familiar tunes with some one at the piano. Recitations were popular, and I knew a few poems by heart to recite when it was my turn.

Among guests at these house-parties I remember the Duke of Leinster and his son, Lord Otho Fitzgerald, then A.D.C. to the Viceroy. Lord Otho's dancing impressed him on my memory. He could reverse in the waltz, a rare accomplishment for a Britisher. One simply went on whirling in a spiral and no help for it, once committed to a waltz in an English ballroom. But the first night we danced at Stillorgan, Lord Otho asked, 'Do you reverse?'

'Oh, do you?' I countered, and we stepped out with our innovation. I have no idea why, but it was considered a little bold to reverse in the waltz, and we were applauded for our daring.

At Stillorgan, also, were Lord Cosmo Russell, and the Earl of Clarendon, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, with his Countess; and Lord Gough, the hero of India, with Lady Gough. He was now retired after putting down the Sikh rebellion of '49 in India, and was living at the Castle of Lough Cutra in Western Galway, lately presented to him by the Government for his services. It was a beautiful place with one original detail in the decorations. Walls of the great hall were covered with brown leather adorned with graceful, curving hieroglyphics in gold and rich colors. These resolved themselves into Spencerian script, on examination, and spelled the names of Lord Gough's many victories.

He was a striking-looking man, this old soldier, with white hair and mustache, sun-bronzed skin, and a military bearing. As a young lieutenant he had served under Wellington in the Peninsular War, fighting the French forces of Joseph Bonaparte, in Spain.

The Iron Duke, himself, we met at the home of Lord Hawarden, and I recall so clearly the gentle smile back of his formidable beak of a nose. He was a very old man then. Waterloo was thirty-six years past, and he died in the following year. But he was erect and soldierly, with his white hair and remarkable profile.

He placed a kind old hand on my shoulder and said his daughter-in-law, the Marchioness of Douro, had spoken of us. It was she who had arranged for our presentation at Court in London. Every one honored the Duke of Wellington, and paid him the greatest deference, and my schoolgirlish pride was thrilled to be chatting, thus casually, with the conqueror of Napoleon. I felt so vividly in touch with history, too, and do now when I remember the Iron Duke's hand on my shoulder.

Lord Hawarden was one of the Queen's lords-in-waiting, and house-parties at his castle were formal affairs. Dinner at eight-thirty was ceremonious to the nth degree, with much gold plate, many courses, and a manservant standing behind every second guest. The first night, the Earl of Carlisle took me in. As Lord Morpeth he had traveled in the United States and so discovered that streets of our cities were not terrible with tomahawks. People often asked us if we were not afraid to live in America — afraid, that is, of the Indians.

At night at Lord Hawarden's I thought of ghosts. If any ghosts there were, they must have haunted the great shadowy rooms of this castle. My bedroom was vastly proportioned. When I sought it that first night with my lighted candle from the hall, I found two other candles burning on the dresser. By their wavering light I undressed and climbed into the great bed with its heavy draperies. But I took one candle with me, and not until I was safely under the covers did I blow it out, to lay it on the counterpane beside me. During the night the heavy silver stick rolled off onto the polished floor with a crash and clatter. In the morning, guests quartered in neighboring rooms all spoke of it; wondered what could have happened about two in the morning when they were wakened by the sound of something heavy falling. I wondered with them, and never confessed.

Every evening in his rounds of the drawing-room after dinner, the Duke of Wellington stopped to speak with me. He would pass among the guests, the center of a little group, escorted as royalty would be. He seemed to inspire great devotion. Lady Douro, his daughter-in-law and one of the Queen's ladies-of-honor, was like a daughter to him in her care and solicitude.

Ladies had but a brief hour in these old evenings. As soon as dinner was ended, we retired to the drawing-room while men enjoyed their port or liqueurs with goodfellowship in the dining-room. We sat and yawned until they joined us. An interlude of music and conversation, then it was time for ladies to retire. Docile creatures that we were, we took our candles and went to bed while the gentlemen finished their evening with cards, billiards, and talk.

A 'Drawing-Room' at the Irish Court was very different from one at St. James's Palace. Every one enjoyed it. The Earl of St. Germains was Viceroy then, a delightful man, not in the least forbidding. He was short and stout with a bald head and a jolly, red face, and he teetered when he walked. Lady St. Germains had all the family hauteur. She was tall and thin and had that look of passive indifference then worn by many English women: a 'We are not amused' expression which may have been borrowed from the Queen.

When I made my curtsy to Lord St. Germains, he took my hand and leaned down to kiss me in fatherly fashion on the cheek. After presentations, we all adjourned to St. Patrick's Hall and had a wonderful time. A long table, the length of the hall on one side, was loaded with refreshments and there was a general spirited informality that made it a lovely party.

On a Command Night at the Theater Royal in Dublin, we saw Miss Glyn in 'Antony and Cleopatra'; an excellent actress of the stilted, declamatory school. Fanny Kemble was a greater artist whom we heard in a reading of 'Hamlet.' It was under the patronage of Lord Clarendon, and Lord Clarendon was late. The reading could not begin until he was in his box, ready to listen. Moments passed. Presently Miss Kemble swept onto the stage and seated herself at the small table, front, to do her waiting there. She tapped the floor with her foot, and beat an impatient tattoo on the table with her fingers, until the tardy Lord Lieutenant and his friends finally arrived. Then in the gloomy manner of one who has suffered unjust indignity, she began her reading. After a few lines the childish exhibition of impatience was forgotten. Her lovely voice and diction and the dramatic fire that burned back of all her expression held us in a spell. The Prince of Denmark lived, for me, at Elsinore on the bare stage of a Dublin theater where a woman in flaring silk gown sat alone.

During our stay in Dublin, my father's friend, ex-President Van Buren, was a visitor at the Vice-Regal Lodge. He dined with us several times and we talked of home. It was good to see the homage paid him. All the troops in garrison were turned out for a grand review in his honor. Lord St. Germains and Mr. Van Buren got on famously together. Both had a jolly sense of humor, and in appearance, Mr. Van Buren was not unlike the Viceroy, plump and portly.

The regular weekly review of troops was always a party for me. Our carriage with many others would be drawn up at the parade ground and the Viceroy on horseback would review the regiments. Once the Earl of Cardigan, whom we had met in London, led the 'March Past' and waved a slight salute to me which pleased my youthful vanity immensely. His brigade was the smartest in the garrison and he took the greatest pride in it, himself buying many of the glittering accessories of the men's uniforms. It was a pride very gloriously justified, for three years after that summer in Dublin, Lord Cardigan led his men in the famous 'Charge of the Light Brigade' celebrated in Tennyson's poem. When we heard of it, I was glad to have seen this gallant soldier leading his 'Six Hundred' down a field of peace.

The young officers we knew in Dublin would ride up to our carriage at review and station themselves near us on their mounts. I had been laughing and chatting with several one day, when the most tragic and extraordinary happening silenced all present.

In the 'Gallop Past' one of the horses of a gun carriage fell, throwing its rider under the wheels, which passed over him. But he jumped to his feet, picked up the sword which had been knocked from his hand, and then fell full length on the ground.

The surgeon of the Hussars was near our carriage, and an officer on horseback dashed up, calling to him, 'Wilkin, Wilkin, at the left!' Dr. Wilkin galloped away toward the man on the ground. When he rose from beside the still figure, we knew that the man was dead.

The next day he called to see us and told us the soldier was so crushed, it seemed he must have been instantly killed. Yet he had risen to his feet and recovered his sword. We thought that to do this had been the message flashed from his brain when he lost his sword and just before the wheels were upon him; and the broken body had automatically obeyed. It was a strange thing to have seen.

With interruptions of visits to the Continent and England, our stay in Ireland lengthened, and before we left Dublin my marriage to Captain Thomas J. Neville, of the famous 'Buffs' Regiment, Her Majesty's Service, had taken place. I was a bride at sixteen. For our wedding-trip we made a carriage tour of the lovely land of County Wicklow. But for all the happiness I had found abroad I was not sorry when Captain Neville resigned from the Army and we turned toward America, my own country.

Most of my old Manhattan memories are centered in the New York Hotel, where we stopped on our return to America. It was on the west side of Broadway, covering the block between Washington Place and Waverly, and was then a fashionable hostelry much favored by Southerners. Mr. Hiram Cranston, the proprietor, catered to them, and the cuisine was noted for its Southern dishes. Potatoes and Irish potatoes were both on the menu, the former being the sweet variety, the only potatoes recognized in the South. White or Irish potatoes were there considered coarse food in a class with cabbage or turnips, gustatory indelicacies of that sort.

The dining-room of the New York held three prodigiously long tables, and meals were served at stated hours on 'the American plan.' We all dined in six parallel rows at six o'clock. I liked our table near the door, where we could see the diners enter. A handsomely gowned woman would be led the length of the room by a prideful head waiter, her skirts billowing about her and her progress like that of an ocean liner following a pilot boat. Family groups moved down the room in loose formation to be caught in a long line along one side of a table.

The entrance of Sir Roderick Cameron and his lady was always interesting. Sometimes he wore his kilts, and they had a little fling as he walked. Lady Cameron, who was an American, followed him with a sort of Amazon stride, her hands clasped low in front of her with falls of lace at the wrists of her sleeves.

Beckwourth, the explorer, lately returned from the Pacific Coast, sat near us and always ordered 'apple pie' for dessert. Near us also sat Ole Bull, a rugged old man still playing his violin at concerts. Frequently a waiter would appear unexpectedly with a bottle of champagne to fill our glasses and murmur as he did so, 'Compliments of Mr. So-and-So.' One looked across the room to smile at Mr. So-and-So and lift the glass in thanks. This was long a custom of public dining in America.

Peacock Alley, many years later in the Waldorf-Astoria, followed an innovation at the New York. A wide corridor extended the length of the old hotel on the parlor floor. There guests would promenade after dinner to greet friends and watch the passing show. The brothers Tucker one always met. They were handsome young gallants from Virginia who for some reason of family pride called themselves respectively Carroll Tucker and Tucker Carroll, but it was understood that Mr. Tucker Carroll was born Tucker.

Among celebrities one saw P. T. Barnum, still radiating his pride in having been Jenny Lind's manager. He had acquired something of the manner of an impresario, all, all flourishes. Jenny Lind stopped at the New York Hotel, but before we arrived had sailed for England with her new husband, Otto Goldschmidt, and I never heard her sing. There were stories that Barnum was in love with her, but I think they were 'publicity,' although it is true the Swedish Nightingale had a devastating charm. The Italian baritone of her concert troupe, Signor Belletti, has spent days in bed in his room at the New York, we were told, ill over his hopeless attachment for her. When she married her accompanist, he could sing with her no more, and returned to Italy. It is pleasant to know that in later years Signor Belletti recovered and was frequently a guest at the Goldschmidt home in London.

Washington Irving, then living at Riverdale, was sometimes the center of a group. He was punctilious in deportment and in dress, and had a touch of romance about him even then, in the twilight of his days. Every one had heard of his lost love, beautiful Matilda Hoffman, who had died long years before while they were betrothed. She was the daughter of a distinguished lawyer, Josiah Ogden Hoffman, in whose office Irving read law as a young man. Afterward, in San Francisco, we knew her relatives of a later generation, Judge Ogden Hoffman and his brother, Southard. Judge Hoffman never married, but his brother's daughter, May Hoffman, was one of the belles of San Francisco society with, doubtless, some of the graces of the lovely Matilda.

One shining night in New York I saw Rachel play 'Camille.' In London we had heard much of her and of her rival, Ristori, the Italian tragedienne who had lately made a conquest of Paris. Ristori I was not to see until her youth was past, but Rachel was still young, in all her illumined beauty when she came to New York to play at the Metropolitan Theater. She had crossed with her company on our old Pacific with Captain Nye, and we heard that a death on board during the voyage had greatly shaken her. She might have felt death touch her, too, in passing, for she was never again to play in France, and was already ill when she reached America. After the first performance of 'La Dame aux Camellias,' she wavered and would have fainted on the stage when she bowed to the applause, except that some one caught her.

I saw her also as Adrienne Lecouvreur, with her dark hair powdered and her dark eyes preternaturally brilliant in the white frame. It was one of her last performances. She went from New York to Philadelphia and there closed her engagement to sail for the West Indies in a vain search for health; and she returned to Europe to die. The greatest of all actresses, they said of her then. She was only thirty-seven when she died.

Once, years afterward in San Francisco, I asked Raphael Weill if he had seen Rachel in his youth in France; and he said but once as a boy, when he sat high in a gallery and she chanted the 'Marseillaise' at some celebration. She made a drama of the hymn, tragic and inspired, which none who heard her could ever forget. He remembered, as I did, the illumination of her beauty.

Broadway was a haphazard-looking street in the eighteen-fifties. Buildings were any height from one story to five and were set unevenly on the line of the sidewalk. Some of them far back with garden space in front were old residences converted to business uses. The white marble store of A. T. Stewart at Chambers Street was one of the finer structures. I remember the laces there, among them the rose-point barbes which Mother wore, caught with a brooch, like a jabot, at the neck of her gown. They really were flaring lace barbes, or beards, in effect. But they were not for youth. Point lace and diamonds were for older women.

A gold locket on a slender gold chain served often for my necklace with party gowns even after I was married. Young girls wore only pearls for jewels; never an emerald or a ruby, and not on any account a diamond until the betrothal ring. For lace, Valenciennes was considered suitable; and in this sartorial review I may state that young women never wore black except for mourning, while older ladies, those past forty, wore only subdued colors and very often black, with their gray and lavender. Bottle green and garnet or plum color were permissible also before fifty. Once when I was a small girl, my grandfather brought for my mother from New York a black silk cloak lined with red. She was no more than twenty-seven years old at the time, but the red lining shocked her. It was too bright for a married woman! Of the myriad changes I've seen in the long years of my life, those of fashion sometimes seem stranger than all others.

It was long undecided whether we were to live in Washington or the West. Finally, my father decided on San Francisco, and there was much preparing for the long trip to join him. We were going to World's End and farewells of our friends were elaborate. My father's old friend, Judge Salmon P. Chase, came from Washington to wish us bon voyage and incidentally to save Mother from an absurd embarrassment. Some one with a low sense of humor had told us that food on the Panama steamers was unfit to eat: advised us to take a crate of chickens with all sorts of provender to be served on the voyage. So with many boxes, the chickens were ordered for delivery at the dock. Happily, Mother spoke of her foresight to Judge Chase, who was moved to bewildering mirth. 'My dear Mrs. Ransome,' he said, 'don't, on any account, take a crate of chickens! Meals on the Panama steamers are as good as those on the Collins liners. Your chickens would be the joke of the voyage' — and he roared again.

So the chickens remained at the market when we sailed on the George Law, May 21, 1856, for Panama en route to California. A little Irish maid we had brought from Dublin went with us, and altogether we were quite a party — my mother, my sister, and brother, with my husband and myself. Though we did not know it then, it was the week of excitement over the shooting of James King of William in San Francisco, and execution of his slayer by the Vigilance Committee, one of California's historic tragedies, which we heard of first at Acapulco when our steamer stopped there on the Pacific voyage north from Panama.

Captain Herndon, of the George Law, was an Annapolis man, and with all the gallantry of a navy officer gave us the daytime use of his cabin when we sailed into hot weather. Dr. Tenison and the first officer, Mr. Van Rensselaer, also helped to make this part of the voyage a happy memory.

At Kingston, Jamaica, we stopped to coal, and had time to drive out to the barracks where British officers commanded native soldiers. The black men in Her Majesty's uniform were, to me, irresistibly opéra bouffe, with the natty caps on their woolly heads. That evening we watched Negro women loading coal. Tubs of the glinting black pieces were carried on their heads in the light of flaring torches, and they sang as they worked, keeping up a rhythmic stamping of their bare feet. For background to this scene, weird and barbaric, a company of Negroes on shore danced a queer fandango, waving torches as they danced. Long after I had gone to bed, I heard the singing and the rhythmic tramp of feet.

The George Law carried 576 passengers bound for California, but of these only a few were in the first cabin. Dr. and Mrs. McNulty were fellow voyagers as were Major and Mrs. Mackall and their large family, going to the new army post at the Presidio of San Francisco. Dr. Hayne and his wife, the actress, Julia Dean Hayne, were on board, lately married; Señor and Señora Berreda were on their way to Chile, where he was to serve as Minister from Spain, and we parted with them at Panama. Long afterward Señora Berreda and her daughters came to live in San Francisco, where one of the daughters married Dr. Harry Sherman and another became Mrs. Willis Polk. But neither of these lovely girls was on the George Law. They were yet to be born.

Aspinwall on May 31. There we left the George Law at an unholy hour — half-past six in the morning — to find breakfast at the Howard House. A sad meal, gastronomically speaking, and we passed a sad morning waiting in the messy little town for our train. Two train-loads of passengers preceded us, but finally we climbed into the toy cars and at half-past twelve started across the Isthmus as the George Law fired a farewell salute. We were bound for Panama City on the west side of the Isthmus, there to embark on the steamer Golden Gate for San Francisco. It was a day of heavy heat. Natives all innocent of raiment stood in the doorways of their huts to watch us pass. The train wound through green country, the thick foliage of tropic forests brushing our windows.

The railway was a recent innovation. Travelers formerly crossed the Isthmus in mule trains, a long line making its way over narrow roads. We heard of bandits, and of children kidnaped and held for ransom by the natives. Two years earlier, in '54, Mrs. James Pelham, of Kentucky, crossed with her little daughters, Sally and Acanthus, to join Dr. Pelham in San Francisco; with them, two Negro servants, the children's nurse and this woman's son. Servants were few in California, and often Southern families would bring one or two slaves who were given their freedom and wages in the new country.

That year the railroad was completed to a point called Summit, about eleven miles from the city of Panama, and this distance was covered on mule-back. Sally Pelham rode with her nurse toward the end of the long procession, the boy following. Somewhere between Summit and Panama City the Negroes were stolen or enticed away by agents of a South American peonage system, who were always on the lookout for slaves from the States; and the little girl was taken with them to be held for ransom. Not until the ship's company reached Panama were they missed.

Only a few weeks before, a white child had been kidnaped from the mule train, and at Panama a native presented himself with an offer to 'find' her for five hundred dollars. Distracted parents paid the money and the child was safely returned. Without waiting for native volunteers, however, fellow travelers of Mrs. Pelham organized a search party and turned back to look for her little girl.

The steamer waited down the bay through long hours. Two shots, fired ten seconds apart, on shore, were to announce that the search was successful, and at dusk they sounded. The rescuers returned with the child unharmed. They had come upon her sitting in the doorway of a native hut, while the Negroes and their guards were gloriously inebriated within; too happily indifferent to interpose when she was gathered up and rushed away by the rescue party. Leaders of the band were absent, probably gone to Panama to plan overtures for ransom.

Bandits had often attacked the mule trains, but the railway baffled them. Presumably it was necessary to adjust methods to this new mode of travel and they were still studying the problem. So we reached the west shore safely. There the little steamer Tobega waited to convey us to the Golden Gate, anchored four miles down the bay in deep water. But the Tobega was soon crowded, and some of us preferred to make the trip on the baggage barge towed behind her. Seated comfortably on trunks, we watched the beauty of the harbor in the late afternoon light.

The water was a sheet of glass on which lay little islands covered with rich green foliage; here and there a white-sailed boat. We passed a small war sloop, the St. Mary, and the men of our company who had pistols were inspired to fire a salute. Cheers from the St. Mary's sailors, and waving caps, answered it. Loaded pistols were here carried casually, it appeared. I felt the touch of the West.

The Golden Gate was a large boat, but so overcrowded that we were all desperately uncomfortable. Steamers from New Orleans, St. Thomas, and South American ports had all brought consignments of passengers to be stowed somewhere. There were two thousand souls on board, and so many children! — four hundred and fifty in the first cabin alone. Beds were made up anywhere at night — even on tables of the salon. No one had his fixed place at meals, but took the nearest seat, and this particular informality nearly caused a tragedy.

One night at dinner Dr. Hayne dropped into an empty chair at the head of a table. At once the purser dashed up and seized him by the shoulder. 'Here, you!' he roared, 'that's the captain's place.'

Dr. Hayne explained that he had not known this; had merely taken the first available seat. But the purser's fury consumed him. 'You lie!' he shouted.

There was a sudden, dead silence in the room. Dr. Hayne was a fiery Southerner. Slowly he picked up a knife from the table, his face white with anger. The purser stood transfixed. Mrs. Hayne rose and caught her husband's arm, pleading, 'Doctor! Doctor!'

In the tense pause that followed, Dr. Hayne discovered, as we all did, that the purser was intoxicated. The knife was flung back on the table and Dr. Hayne turned and walked out of the room. Some one led the purser away, and dinner proceeded.

A genuine tragedy a few days afterward shocked us all. One of the sailors who had disobeyed orders was confined in the boiler room for punishment and through some terrible oversight was left there too long. He was dying when they released him, and lived only a few moments, having literally been baked to death. Indignation against the ship's officers was very bitter and sailors were almost in a state of mutiny. The man was buried that evening and we all went on deck for the service. Trouble from the crew seemed imminent. But men passengers made an armed guard around the Captain while he read the burial service and the sailors looked on, silently hostile. When the body slid over the ship's side and splashed into the black waters below, the tension was broken and the men went peaceably back to their tasks.

The Gate's commander was an impervious soul. Nothing disturbed the equanimity of Captain Lapidge. He would promenade the deck wearing white kid gloves and smoking a long cigar, picking his way among the children as though they were inanimate obstructions, and in the same detached manner he officiated at the funeral of a little child who died during the voyage.

Two deaths and the profoundly moving burial at sea depressed us all, and I was so grateful for the happy, irrepressible wit of Rufus Lockwood. He was one of the young lights of the law in San Francisco, returning after a visit 'back East,' and he was frequently my partner at the endless games of whist and cribbage we played to pass the time. When we would all relieve our feelings over discomforts of the voyage, he would say solemnly, 'If ever I go to sea again, I hope to drown.'

He did go to sea again a few years later, and was drowned, one of those who went down on the Central America — our old George Law — when she foundered off Cape Hatteras. He had asked one of the officers if the ship was doomed. Assured that it was, he went to his stateroom and locked himself in, and so met death alone. Some of the passengers who took to the lifeboats were saved.

There is a happier story of him. In San Francisco it happened some trivial matter weighed on his mind, and one evening he walked out to Meiggs's Wharf to think it over. A friend who called to see him was told where he had gone, followed him, and tactfully suggested that, if he were brooding over money troubles, there was plenty of cash at his disposal on a loan. Lockwood laughed, drew a handful of gold twenty-dollar pieces from his pocket, and began to skate the coins over the water as boys do stones. 'I can keep that up as long as you can,' he said.

Eugene Delessert, a brother of Edouard Delessert, French explorer, was one of our fellow passengers. These two young Parisians, touched with Wanderlust, were nephews of Benjamin Delessert, financier and philanthropist of the Napoleonic era in France. They had come to America in the eighteen-forties and journeyed through Canada and British Columbia, sailing down the coast to California, where our friend had lived for several years. Early in the eighteen-fifties he had gone back to France and published his 'Voyages on Two Oceans,' and was now returning for a second visit to San Francisco, where we enjoyed his friendship until he once more departed for his beloved France, to remain. He had been a member of the first Vigilance Committee in San Francisco, and when at Acapulco we found California newspapers with accounts of the James King of William tragedy, he told us much of this organization which defied law to enforce it.

The Vigilantes were organized in '49 to suppress the Hounds, a band of lawless ruffians whose idea of an evening's pleasure was to terrorize peaceful citizens. They raided the Chileño quarter at the foot of Telegraph Hill, one night, killing and burning. The next day law-abiding men of the city met and formed a committee to deal with them. The Hounds were driven from the community, hundreds of crooked gamblers and cutthroats departing hastily for Mexico or down the coast anywhere.

Two years later, the Committee met again in the rooms at 215 Sacramento Street, in the small building known as Fort Gunnybags until it was burned in the fire of 1906; so named because the Vigilantes fortified themselves there with bags of sand. At the sessions of '51, four men were tried and condemned for murder by the Committee. Now again in 1856, it had been called together to see justice done for the shooting of King. Court trials were too often travesties, with packed juries.

James King of William, newspaper editor and one of the honored men of the community, had been shot down in Montgomery Street by James Casey, ex-convict, then serving as city supervisor, whose record King had published. Public excitement was intense, and three thousand men answered the call of William T. Coleman for volunteer Vigilantes. They were backed by bankers of the city. Opposed to them were Law and Order men, organized several years before when the Vigilantes, essentially an emergency organization, threatened to function too long. Opposition in this case, however, seems to have been passive.

Casey was taken from the jail on Broadway to Fort Gunnybags on Sunday morning following the shooting. With him was taken Charles Cora, gambler, who killed Colonel William H. Richardson and was in jail awaiting trial. The prisoners' removal was profoundly dramatic and was watched in silence by thousands of citizens gathered on the roofs and on the slopes of Telegraph Hill. General William T. Sherman, with his Civil War fame still in the future, stood a spectator on the roof of the Internhtional Hotel. He was then employed in a San Francisco bank, and serving as an officer of the State Militia. With him that morning were Governor Johnson and Mayor Van Ness, and these three watched in silence the march of the Vigilantes. The Governor and the Mayor had made formal futile pleas that the law be allowed to take its course, and now stood aside.

A company of Vigilantes marched up Sacramento Street, turned into Kearney and drew up before the jail on Broadway. William T. Coleman and his aide Truet were driven up in a carriage, and, while their men stood at attention, mounted the iron stairway to the rather high entrance of the jail. The sheriff refused to admit them. They gave him five minutes. At the end of that time, he surrendered and the doors were opened. Coleman and Truet entered. When they emerged with the prisoners, a cheer started, but Coleman stilled it with a wave of his hand and in silence they were driven to Fort Gunnybags.

There the men were tried and sentenced to death; and were hanged ignominiously from a second-story window for every one to see. A beam from the roof served for gallows.

Much of all this we learned after we reached San Francisco, where Belle Cora, the gambler's widow, still enjoyed her notoriety. She was a woman of the gambling-halls who had taken Cora's name long before, and he married her an hour before his execution, in the room from which he stepped out the window to be hanged. A tragic business, although there seems to have been little sympathy for the bride. She wore mourning for months and promenaded Montgomery Street, where I saw her in her weeds.