PROLOGUE.
In San Francisco the "rainy season" had been making itself a reality
to the wondering Eastern immigrant. There were short days of drifting
clouds and flying sunshine, and long succeeding nights of incessant
downpour, when the rain rattled on the thin shingles or drummed on the
resounding zinc of pioneer roofs. The shifting sand-dunes on the outskirts
were beaten motionless and sodden by the onslaught of consecutive storms;
the southeast trades brought the saline breath of the outlying Pacific even
to the busy haunts of Commercial and Kearney streets; the low-lying
Mission road was a quagmire; along the City Front, despite of piles and
pier and wharf, the Pacific tides still asserted themselves in mud and ooze
as far as Sansome Street; the wooden sidewalks of Clay and Montgomery
streets were mere floating bridges or buoyant pontoons superposed on
elastic bogs; Battery Street was the Silurian beach of that early period on
which tin cans, packing-boxes, freight, household furniture, and even the
runaway crews of deserted ships had been cast away. There were
dangerous and unknown depths in Montgomery Street and on the Plaza,
and the wheels of a passing carriage hopelessly mired had to be lifted by
the volunteer hands of a half dozen high-booted wayfarers, whose wearers
were sufficiently content to believe that a woman, a child, or an invalid
was behind its closed windows, without troubling themselves or the
occupant by looking through the glass.