[begin page 425]

Attributed Items: San Francisco Morning Call
June–September 1864

[begin page 426]

At five minutes to nine o'clock last night, San Francisco was favored by another earthquake. There were three distinct shocks, two of which were very heavy, and appeared to have been done on purpose, but the third did not amount to much. Heretofore our earthquakes—as all old citizens experienced in this sort of thing will recollect—have been distinguished by a soothing kind of undulating motion, like the roll of waves on the sea, but we are happy to state that they are shaking her up from below now. The shocks last night came straight up from that direction; and it is sad to reflect, in these spiritual times, that they might possibly have been freighted with urgent messages from some of our departed friends. The suggestion is worthy a moment's serious reflection, at any rate.

[begin page 427]

If one tire Ⓐtextual note of the drudgeries and scenes of the city, and would breathe the fresh air of the sea, let him take the cars and omnibuses, or, better still, a buggy and pleasant steed, and, ere the sea breeze sets in, glide out to the Cliff House. We tried it a day or two since. Out along the railroad track, by the pleasant homes of our citizens, where architecture begins to put off its swaddling clothes, and assume form and style, grace and beauty, by the neat gardens with their green shrubbery and laughing flowers, out where were once sand hills and sand-valleys, now streets and homesteads. If you would doubly enjoy pure air, first pass along by Mission Street Bridge, the Golgotha of Butcherville, and wind along through the alleys where stand the whiskey mills and grunt the piggeries of “Uncle Jim.” Breathe and inhale deeply ere you reach this castle of Udolpho, and then hold your breath as long as possible, for Arabia is a long way thence, and the balm of a thousand flowers is not for sale in that locality. Then away you go over paved, or planked, or Macadamized roads, out to the cities of the dead, pass between Lone Mountain and Calvary, and make a straight due west course for the ocean. Along the way are many things to please and entertain, especially if an intelligent chaperon accompany you. Your eye will travel over in every direction the vast territory which Swain, Weaver & Co. desire to fence in, the little homesteads by the way, Dr. Rowell's arena castle, and Zeke Wilson's Bleak House in the sand. Splendid road, ocean air that swells the lungs and strengthens the limbs. Then there's the Cliff House, perched on the very brink of the ocean, like a castle by the Rhine, with countless sea-lions rolling their unwieldy bulks on the rocks within rifle-shot, or plunging into and sculling about in the foaming waters. Steamers and sailing craft are passing, wild fowl scream, and sea-lions growl and bark, the waves roll into breakers, foam and spray, for five miles along the beach, beautiful and grand, and one feels as if at sea with no rolling motion nor sea-sickness, and the appetite is whetted by the drive [begin page 428] and the breeze, the ocean's presence wins you into a happy frame, and you can eat one of the best dinners with the hungry relish of an ostrich. Go to the Cliff House. Go ere the winds get too fresh, and if you like, you may come back by Mountain Lake and the Presidio, overlook the Fort, and bow to the Stars and Stripes as you pass.

[begin page 429]

We do not like it, as far as we have got. We shall probably not fall so deeply in love with reporting for a San Francisco paper as to make it impossible ever to wean us from it. There is a powerful saving-clause for us in the fact that the conservators of public information—the persons whose positions afford them opportunities not enjoyed by others to keep themselves posted concerning the important events of the city's daily life—do not appear to know anything. At the offices and places of business we have visited in search of information, we have got it in just the same shape every time, with a promptness and uniformity which is startling, perhaps, but not gratifying. They all answer and say unto you, “I don't know.” We do not mind that, so much, but we do object to a man's parading his ignorance with an air of overbearingⒶemendation egotism which shows you that he is proud of it. True merit is modest, and why should not true ignorance be? In most cases, the head of the concernⒶemendation is not at home; but then why not pay better wages and leave men at the counter who would not be above knowing something? Judging by the frills they put on—the sad but infallible accompaniment of forty dollars a year and found—these fellows are satisfied they are not paid enough to make it an object to know what is going on around them, or to state that their crop of information has failed, this century, without doing it with an exaggeration of dignity altogether disproportioned to the importance of the thing. In Washoe, if a man don't know anything, he will at least go on and tell you what he don't know, so that you can publish it in case you do not stumble upon something of more vital interest to the community, in the course of the day. If a similar course were pursued here, we might always have something to write about—and occasionally a column or so left over for next day's issue, perhaps.

[begin page 430]

Lena Kahn, otherwise known as Mother Kahn, or the Kahn ofⒶemendation Tartary, who is famous in this community for her infatuated partiality for the Police Court as a place of recreation, was on hand there again yesterday morning. She was mixed up in a triangular row, the sides of the triangle being Mr.Ⓐemendation Oppenheim, Mrs. Oppenheim, and herself. It appeared from the evidence that she formed the base of the triangle—which is to say, she was at the bottom of the row, and struck the first blow. Moses Levi, being sworn, said he was in the neighborhood, and heard Mrs. Oppenheim scream; knew it was her by the vicious expression she always threw into her screams; saw the defendant (her husband) go into the Tartar's house and gobble up the partner of his bosom and his business, and rescue her from the jaws of destruction (meaning Mrs. Kahn,) and bring her forth to sport once more amid the——. At this point the lawyer turned off Mr. Levi's gas, which seemed to be degenerating into poetry, and asked him what his occupation was? The Levite said he drove an express wagon. The lawyer—with that sensitiveness to the slightest infringement of the truth, which is so becoming to the profession—inquired severely if he did not sometimes drive the horse also! The wretched witness, thus detected before the multitude in his deep-laid and subtle prevarication, hung his head in silence. His evidence could no longer be respected, and he moved away from the stand with the consciousness written upon his countenance of how fearful a thing it is to trifle with the scruples of a lawyer. Mrs. Oppenheim next came forward and gave a portion of her testimony in damaged English, and the balance in dark and mysterious German. In the English glimpses of her story it was discernible that she had innocently trespassed upon the domain of the Khan, and had been rudely seized upon in such a manner as to make her arm turn blue, (she turned up her sleeve and showed the Judge,) and the bruise had grown worse since that day, until at last it was tinged with a ghastly green, (she turned up her sleeve again for impartial [begin page 431] judicial inspection,) and instantly after receiving this affront, so humiliating to one of gentleⒶemendation blood, she had been set upon without cause or provocation, and thrown upon the floor and “licked.” This last expression possessed a charm for Mrs. Oppenheim, that no persuasion of Judge or lawyers could induce her to forego, even for the sake of bringing her wrongs into a stronger light, so long as those wrongs, in such an event, must be portrayed in language less pleasant to her ear. She said the Khan had licked her, and she stuck to it and reiterated with unflinching firmness. Becoming confused by repeated assaults from the lawyers in the way of badgering questions, which her wavering senses could no longer comprehend, she relapsed at last into hopeless German again, and retired within the lines. Mr. Oppenheim then came forward and remained under fire for fifteen minutes, during which time he made it as plain as the disabled condition of his English would permit him to do, that he was not in anywise to blame, at any rate; that his wife went out after a warrant for the arrest of the Kahn; that she stopped to “make it up” with the Kahn, and the redoubtable Kahn tackled her; that he was dry-nursing the baby at the time, and when he heard his wife scream, he suspected, with a sagacity which did him credit, that she wouldn't have “hollered 'dout dere vas someding de matter;” therefore he piled the child up in a corner remote from danger, and moved upon the works of the Tartar; she had waltzed into the wife and finished her, and was already on picket duty, waiting for the husband, and when he came she smacked him over the head a couple of times with the deadly bludgeon she uses to elevate linen to the clothes-line with; and then, stimulated by this encouragement, he started to the Police Office to get out a warrant for the arrest of the victorious army, but the victorious army, always on the alert, was there ahead of him, and he now stood in the presence of the Court in the humiliating position of a man who had aspired to be plaintiff, but overcome by strategy, had sunk to the grade of defendant. At this point his mind wandered, his vivacious tongue grew thick with mushy German syllables, and the last of the Oppenheims sank to rest at the feet of justice. We had done less than our duty had we allowed this most important trial—freighted, as it was, with matters of the last importance to every member of this [begin page 432] community, and every conscientious, law-abiding man and woman upon whom the sun of civilization shines to-day—to be given to the world in the columns, with no more elaboration than the customary “Benjamin Oppenheim, assault and battery, dismissed; Lena Oppenheim and Fredrika Kahn, held to answer.” We thought, at first, of starting in that way, under the head of “Police Court,” but a second glance at the case showed us that it was one of a most serious and extraordinary nature, and ought to be put in such a shape that the public could give to it that grave and deliberate consideration which its magnitude entitled it to.

[begin page 433]

An old two-story, sheet-iron, pioneer, fire-proof house, got loose from her moorings last night, and drifted down Sutter street, toward Montgomery. We are not informed as to where she came from or where she was going to—she had halted near Montgomery street, and appeared to be studying about it. If one might judge from the expression that hung about her dilapidated front and desolate windows, she was thoroughly demoralized when she stopped there, and sorry she ever started. Is there no law against houses loafing around the public streets at midnightⒶemendation?

[begin page 434]

Anna Jakes, drunk and disorderly, but excessively cheerful, made her first appearance in the City Prison last night, and made the dreary vaults ring with music. It was of the distorted, hifalutin kind, and she evidently considered herself an opera sharp of some consequence. Her idea was that “Whee-heepingⒶemendation sad and lo honely” was not calculated to bring this cruel war to a close shortly, and she delivered herself of that idea under many difficulties; because, in the first place, Mary Kane, an old offender, was cursing like a trooper in a neighboring cell; and secondly, a man in another apartment who wanted to sleep, and who did not admire anybody's music, and especially Anna Jakes', kept inquiring, “Will you dry up that infernal yowling, you heifer?”—swinging a hefty oath at her occasionally—and so the cruel war music was so fused and blended with blasphemy in a higher key, and discouraging comments in a lower, that the pleasurable effect of it was destroyed, and the argument and the moral utterly lost. Anna finally fell to singing and dancing, both, with a spirit that promised to last till morning, and Mary Kane and the weary man got disgusted and withdrew from the contest. Anna Jakes says she is a highly respectable young married lady, with a husband in the Boise country; that she has been sumptuously reared and expensively educated; that her impulses are good and her instincts refined; that she taught school a long time in the city of New York, and is an accomplished musician; and finally, that her sister got married last Sunday night, and she got drunk to do honor to the occasion—and with a persistency that is a credit to one of such small experience, she has been on a terrific bender ever since. She will probably let herself out on the cruel war for Judge Shepheard, in the Police Court, this morning.

[begin page 435]

The “Coming Man” Has Arrived—And he fetched his things with him. JohnⒶemendation Smith was brought into the city prison last night, by Officers Conway and Minson, so limbered up with whiskey that you might have hung him on a fence like a wet shirt. His battered slouch-hat was jammed down over his eyes like an extinguisher; his shirt-bosom (which was not clean, at all,) was spread open, displaying his hair trunk beneath; his coat was old, and short-waisted, and fringed at the edges, and exploded at the elbows like a blooming cotton-boll, and its collar was turned up, so that one could see by the darker color it exposed, that the garment had known better days, when it was not so yellow, and sunburnt, and freckled with grease-spots, as it was now; it might have hung aboutⒶemendation its owner symmetrically and gracefully, too, in those days, but now it had a general hitch upward, in the back, as if it were climbing him; his pantaloons were of coarse duck, very much soiled, and as full of wrinkles as if they had been made of pickled tripe; his boots were not blacked, and they probably never had been; the subject's face was that of a man of forty, with the sun of an invincible good nature shining dimly through the cloud of dirt that enveloped it. The officers held John up in a warped and tangled attitude, like a pair of tongs struck by lightning, and searched him, and the result was as follows: Two slabs of old cheese; a double handful of various kinds of crackers; seven peaches; a box of lip-salve, bearing marks of great age; an onion; two dollars and sixty-five cents, in two purses, (the odd money being considered as circumstantial evidence that the defendant had been drinking beer at a five-cent house;) a soiled handkerchief; a fine-tooth comb; also one of coarser pattern; a cucumber pickle, in an imperfect state of preservation; a leather string; an eye-glass, such as prospectors use; one buckskin glove; a printed ballad, “Call me pet names;” an apple; part of a dried herring; a copy of the Boston Weekly Journal, and copies of several San Francisco papers; and in each and every pocket he had two or [begin page 436] three chunks of tobacco, and also one in his mouth of such remarkable size as to render his articulation confused and uncertain. We have purposely given this prisoner a fictitious name, out of the consideration we feel for him as a man of noble literary instincts, suffering under temporary misfortune. He said he always read the papers before he got drunk; go thou and do likewise. Our literary friend gathered up his grocery store and staggered contentedly into a cell; but if there is any virtue in the boasted power of the press, he shall stagger out again to-dayⒶemendation, a free man.

[begin page 437]

A visit to the County Prison, in Broadway above Kearny street, will satisfy almost any reasonable person that there are worse hardships in life than being immured in those walls. It is a substantial-looking place, but not a particularly dreary one, being as neat and clean as a parlor in its every department. There are two long rows of cells on the main floor—thirty-one, altogether—disposed on each side of an alley-way, built of the best quality of brick, imported from Boston, and laid inⒶemendation cement, which is so hard that a nail could not be driven into it; each cell has a thick iron door with a wicket in its centre for the admission of air and light, and a narrow aperture in the opposite wall for the same purpose; these cells are just about the size and have the general appearance of a gentleman's state-room on a steamboat, but are rather more comfortable than those dens are sometimes; a two-story bunk, a slop-bucket and a sort of table are the principal furniture; the walls inside are whitewashedⒶemendation, and the floors kept neat and clean by frequent scrubbing; on Wednesdays and Saturdays the prisoners are provided with buckets of water for general bathing and clothes-washing purposes, and they are required to keep themselves and their premises clean at all times; on Tuesdays and Fridays they clean up their cells and scrub the floors thereof. In one of these rows of cells it is pitch dark when the doors are shut, but in the other row it is very light when the wickets are open. From the number of books and newspapers lying on the bunks, it is easy to believe that a vast amount of reading is done in the County Prison; and smoking too, we presume, because, although the rules forbid the introduction of spirituous liquors, wine, or beer into the jail, nothing is said about tobacco. Most of the occupants of the light cells were lying on the bunks reading, and some of those in the dark ones were standing up at the wickets similarly employed. “Sick Jimmy,” or James Rodgers, who was found guilty of manslaughter a day or two ago, in killing Foster, has been permitted by Sheriff Davis to occupy [begin page 438] one of the light cells, on account of his ill health. He says his quarters would be immensely comfortable if one didn't mind the irksomeness of the confinement. We could hear the prisoners laughing and talking in the cells, but they are prohibited from making much noise or talking from one cell to another. There are three iron cells standing isolated in the yard, in which a batch of Chinamen wear the time away in smoking opium two hours a day and sleeping the other twenty-two. The kitchen department is roomy and neat, and the heavy tragedy work in it is done by “trusties,” or prisoners detailed from time to time for that duty. Up stairs are the cells for the women; two of these are dark, iron cells, for females confined for high crimes. The others are simply well lighted and ventilated wooden rooms, such as the better class of citizens over in Washoe used to occupy a few years ago, when the common people lived in tents. There is nothing gorgeous about these wooden cells, but plenty of light and whitewashing make them look altogether cheerful. Mesdames O'Keefe, McCarty, Mary Holt and “Gentle Julia,” (Julia Jennings,) are the most noted ladies in this department. Prison-keeperⒶemendation Clark says the quiet, smiling, pious-looking Mrs. McCarty is just the boss thief of San Francisco, and the misnamed “Gentle Julia” is harder to manage, and gives him more trouble than all the balance of the tribe put together. She uses “awful” language, and a good deal of it, the same being against the rule. Mrs. McCarty dresses neatly, reclines languidly on a striped mattress, smiles sweetly at vacancy, and labors at her “crochet-work” with the serene indifference of a princess. The four ladies we have mentioned are unquestionably stuck after the County Prison; they reside there most of the time, coming out occasionally for a week, to steal something, or get on a bender, and going back again as soon as they can prove that they have accomplished their mission. A lady warden will shortly be placed in charge of the women's department here, in accordance with an act of the last Legislature, and we feel able to predict that Gentle Julia will make it mighty warm for her. Most of the cells, above and below, are occupied, and it is proposed to put another story on the jail at no distant day. We have no suggestions to report concerning the County Jail. We are of the opinion that it is all right, and doing well.

[begin page 439]

Mrs.Ⓐemendation Catherine Moran was arraigned before Judge Cowles yesterday, on a charge of assault with an axe upon Mrs. Eliza Markee, with intent to do bodily injury. A physician testified that there were contused wounds on plaintiff's head, and also a cut through the scalp, which bled profusely. The fuss was all about a child, and that is the strangest part about it—as if, in a city so crowded with them as San Francisco, it were worth while to be particular as to the fate of a child or two. However, mothers appear to go more by instinct than political economy in matters of this kind. Mrs. Markee testified that she heard war going on among the children, and she rushed down into the yard and found her Johnny sitting on the stoop, building a toy wagon, and Mrs. Moran standing over him with an axe, threatening to split his head open. She asked the defendant not to split her Johnny. The defendant at once turned upon her, threatening to kill her, and struck her two or three times with the axe, when she, the plaintiff, grabbed the defendant by the arms and prevented her from scalping her entirely. Blood was flowing profusely. Mr. Killdig described the fight pretty much as the plaintiff had done, and said he parted, or tried to part the combatants, and that he called upon Mr.Ⓐemendation Moran to assist him, but that neutral power said the women had been sour a good while—let them fight it out. Another witness substantiated the main features of the foregoing testimony, and said the warriors were all covered with blood, and the children of both, to the number of many dozens, had fled in disorder and taken refuge under the house, crying, and saying their mothers were killing each other. Mrs. Murphy, for the defence, testified as follows: “I was coomun along, an' Misses Moran says to me, says she, this is the redwood stick she tried to take me life wid, or wan o' thim other sticks, Missis Murphy, dear, an' says I, Missis Moran, dairlin',”——Here she was shut off, merely because the Court did not care about knowing what Mrs. Moran told her about the fight, and consequently we have nothing fur- [begin page 440] ther of this important witness's testimony to offer. The case was continued. Seriously, instead of a mere ordinary she-fight, this is a fuss of some consequence, and should not be lightly dealt with. It was an earnest attempt at manslaughter—or woman-slaughter, at any rate, which is nearly as bad.

[begin page 441]

When we contracted to report for this newspaper, the important matter of two earthquakes a month was not considered in the salary. There shall be no mistake of that kind in the next contract, though. Last night, at twenty minutes to eleven, the regular semi monthly earthquake, due the night before, arrived twenty-four hours behind time, but it made up for the delay in uncommon and altogether unnecessary energy and enthusiasm. The first effort was so gentle as to move the inexperienced stranger to the expression of contempt and brave but very bad jokes; but the second was calculated to move him out of his boots, unless they fitted him neatly. Up in the third story of this building the sensation we experienced was as ifⒶemendation we had been sent for and were mighty anxious to go. The house seemed to waltz from side to side with a quick motion, suggestive of sifting corn meal through a sieve; afterward it rocked grandly to and fro like a prodigious cradle, and in the meantime several persons started down stairs to see if there were anybody in the street so timid as to be frightened at a mere earthquake. The third shock was not important, as compared with the stunner that had just preceded it. That second shock drove people out of the theatres by dozens. At the Metropolitan, we are told that Franks, the comedian, had just come on the stage, (they were playing the “Ticket-of-Leave Man,”) and was about to express the unbounded faith he had in May; he paused until the jarring had subsided, and then improved and added force to the text by exclaiming, “It will take more than an earthquake to shake my faith in that woman!” And in that, Franks achieved a sublime triumph over the elements, for he “brought the house down,” and the earthquake could n't. From the time the shocks commenced last night, until the windows had stopped rattling, a minute and a half had elapsed.

[begin page 442]

We are pleased to hear of the prosperous condition of the Dashaway Society. Their ranks, we are assured, are constantly filling up. The draught with them is working well, causing many to volunteer. The bounty they receive is sobriety, respect and health, and the blessings of families. We will not attribute all these new recruitings to the high tariff, and the difficulty of obtaining any decent whiskey. But some who join give this as their reason. They fear strychnine more than inebriation. They find it impossible to exhaust all the tarantula juice in the country, as they have been endeavoring to do for a long while, in hopes to get at some decent “rum” after all the tangle-leg should have been swallowed, and so conclude to save tariff on liquors and life by coming square up to the hydrant. Their return to original innocence and primitive bibations will be gladly welcomed. Water is a forgiving friend. After years of estrangement it meets the depraved taste with the same friendship as before. Water bears no enmity. But it must be a strange meeting—water pure and the tongues of some of our solid drinkers of Bourbon and its dishonest relations. Alkali water to the innocent mouths of cattle from the waters of the Mississippi could not seem stranger nor more disagreeable at first. But it will come around right at last. Success to the tariff and the Dashaways.

[begin page 443]

A long file of applicants, perhaps seventy-five or eighty, passed in review before the Police Commissioners yesterday afternoon, anxious to be employed by the city in snatching drunks, burglars, petty larcenersⒶemendation, wife-whippers, and all offenders generally, under the authority of a star on the left breast. One of the candidates—a fine, burly specimen of an Emeralder—leaned negligently against the door-post, speculating on his chances of being “passed,” and at the same time whiffing industriously at an old dhudeen, blackened by a thousand smokes. He was smoking thus thoughtfully when a contraband passed him, conveying a message to some official in the Court.

“There goes another applicant,” said a wag at his elbow.

“What?” asked the smoker.

“A darkey looking for a sit on the Police,” was the reply.

“An' do they give nagurs a chance on the Polis?”

“Of course.”

“Then, be J—s,” said Pat, knocking the ashes out of his pipe and stowing it away, “I'm out of the ring; I wouldn't demane mesilf padrowling o'nights with a nagur.”

He gave one glance at the innocent and unsuspecting darkey, and left the place in disgust.

[begin page 444]

Getting military information is about the slowest business we ever undertook. We clipped the above paragraph from the Stockton Independent at eleven o'clock yesterday morning, and went skirmishing among the “chief captains,” as the Bible modestly terms Brigadier-Generals, in search of further information, from that time until half-past seven o'clock in the evening, before we got it. We will engage to find out who wrote the “Junius Letters” in less time than that, if we have a mind to turn our attention to it. We started to the Provost Marshal's office, but met another reporter, who said: “I suppose I know where you're going, but it's no use—just come from there—military etiquette and all that, you know—those fellows are mum—won't tell anything about it—damn!” We sought General McDowell, but he had gone to Oakland. In the course of the afternoon we visited all kinds of headquarters and places, and called on General Mason, Colonel Drum, General Van Bokkelen, Leland of the Occidental, Chief Burke, Keating, Emperor Norton, and everybody else that would be likely to know the Government's business, and knowing it, be willing to impart the coveted information for a consideration such as the wealthy fraternity of reporters are always prepared to promise. We did finally get it, from a high official source, and [begin page 445] without any charge whatever—but then the satisfaction of the thing was all sapped out of it by exquisite “touches on the raw”—which means, hints that military matters were not proper subjects to branch out on in the popular sensational way so palatable to the people, and mild but extremely forcible suggestions about the unhappy fate that has overtaken fellows who ventured to experiment on “contraband news.” We shall not go beyond the proper limits, if we fully appreciate those suggestions, and we think we do. We were told that we might say the military authorities, hearing where the Bishop had come from, (and may be what he was about—we will just “chance” that notion for a “flyer,”) did send Captain Jackson to simply ask the Bishop to come down to San Francisco; (he didn't arrest the Bishop, at all—but most anybody would have come on a nice little invitation like that, without waiting for the formal compliment of an arrest: another excessively smart suggestion of ours, and we do hope it isn't contraband;) the Captain only requested the Bishop to come down here and explain to the authorities what he was up to; and he did—he arrived here night before last—and explained it in writing, and that document and the Bishop have been taken under advisement, (and we think we were told a decision had been arrived at, and that it was not public property just yet—but we are not sure, and we had rather not take any chances on this part of the business.) We do know, however, that the Bishop and his document are still under advisement as far as the public are concerned, and we wouldⒶemendation further advise the public not to get in a sweat about it, but to hold their grip patiently until it is proper for them to know all about the matter. This is all we know concerning the Bishop and his explanation, and if we have branched out too much and shed something that trenches upon that infernal “contraband” rule, we want to go home.

[begin page 446]

For several days a vagrant two-story frame house has been wandering listlessly about Commercial street, above this office, and she has finally stopped in the middle of the thoroughfare, and is staring dejectedly towards Montgomery street, as if she would like to go down there, but really don't feel equal to the exertion. We wish they would trot her along and leave the street open; she is an impassable obstruction and an intolerable nuisance where she stands now. If they set her up there to be looked at, it is all right; but we have looked at her as much as we want to, and are anxious for her to move along; we are not stuck after her any.

[begin page 447]

That melancholy old frame house that has been loafing around Commercial street for the past week, got disgusted at the notice we gave her in the last issue of the Call, and drifted off into some other part of the city yesterday. It is pleasing to our vanity to imagine that if it had not been for our sagacity in divining her hellish designs, and our fearless exposure of them, she would have been down on Montgomery street to-dayⒶemendation, playing herself for a hotel. As it is, she has folded her tents like the Arabs, and quietly stolen away, behind several yoke of oxen.

[begin page 448]

The lamented Lazarus departed this life about a year ago, and from that time until recently poor Bummer has mourned the loss of his faithful friend in solitude, scorning the sympathy and companionship of his race with that stately reserve and exclusiveness which has always distinguished him since he became a citizen of San Francisco. But, for several weeks past, we have observed a vagrant black puppy has taken up with him, and attends him in his promenades, bums with him at the restaurants, and watches over his slumbers as unremittingly as did the sainted Lazarus of other days. Whether that puppy really feels an unselfish affection for Bummer, or whether he is actuated by unworthy motives, and goes with him merely to ring in on the eating houses through his popularity at such establishments, or whether he is one of those fawning sycophants that fasten upon the world's heroes in order that they may be glorified by the reflected light of greatness, we cannot yet determine. We only know that he hangs around Bummer, and snarls at intruders upon his repose,Ⓐemendation and looks proud and happy when the old dog condescends to notice him. He ventures upon no puppyish levity in the presence of his prince, and essays no unbecoming familiarity, but in all respects conducts himself with the respectful decorum which such a puppy so situated should display. Consequently, in time, he may grow into high favor.

[begin page 449]

All day yesterday the cars were carrying colored people of all shades and tints, and of all sizes and both sexes, out to Hayes' Park, to celebrate the anniversary of the emancipation of their race in England's West Indian possessions years ago. They rode the fiery untamed steeds that are kept for equestrian duty in the grounds; they practised pistol shooting, but abstained from destroying the targets; they swung; they promenaded among the shrubbery; they filled themselves up with beer and sandwiches —all just as the thing is done there by white folks—and they essayed to dance, but the effort was not a brilliant success. It was interesting to look at, though. For languid, slow-moving, pretentious, impressive, solemn, and excessively high-toned and aristocratic dancing, commend us to the disenthralled North American negro, when there is no restraint upon his natural propensity to put on airs. White folks of the upper stratum of society pretend to walk through quadrilles, in a stately way, but these saddle-colored young ladies can discount them in the slow-movement evidence of high gentility. They don't know much about dancing, but they “let on” magnificently, as if the mazes of a quadrille were their native element, and they move serenely through it and tangle it hopelessly and inextricably, with an unctuousⒶemendation satisfaction that is surpassingly pleasant to witness. By the middle of the afternoon about two hundred darkies were assembled at the Park; or rather, to be precise, there was not much “darky” about it, either; for if the prevailing lightness of tint was worth anything as evidence, the noble miscegenationist had been skirmishing considerably among them in days gone by. It was expected that the colored race would come out strong in the matter of numbers (and otherwise) in the evening, when a grand ball was to be given and last all night.

[begin page 450]

Yesterday, at eleven o'clock in the forenoon, Emanuel Lopus, barber, of room No. 23, Mead House, wrote to the idol of his soul that he loved her better than all else beside; that unto him the day was dark, the sun seemed swathed in shadows, when she was not by; that he was going to take the life that God had given him, and enclosed she would please find one lock of hair, the same being his. He then took a teaspoonful of laudanum in a gallon of gin, and lay down to die. That is one version of it. Another is, that he really took an honest dose of laudanum, and was really anxious to put his light out, so much so, indeed, that after Dr. Murphy had come, resolved to pump the poison from his stomach or pump his heart out in the attempt, and after he had comfortably succeeded in the first mentioned proposition, this desperate French barber rose up and tried to whip the surgeon for saving his life, and defeating his fearful purpose, and wasting his laudanum. Another version is, that he went to his friend Jullien, in the barber shop under the Mead House, and told him to smash into his trunk after he had breathed his last and shed his immortal soul, and take from it his professional soap, and his lather-brush and his razors, and keep them forever to remember him by, for he was going this time without reserve. This was a touching allusion to his repeated assertions, made at divers and sundry times during the past few years, that he was going off immediately and commit suicide. Jullien paid no attention to him, thinking he was only drunk, as usual, and that his better judgment would prompt him to substitute his regular gin at the last moment, instead of the deadlier poison. But on going to No. 23 an hour afterwards, he found the wretched Lopus in a heavy stupor, and all unconscious of the things of earth, and the junk-bottle and the laudanum phial on the bureau. We have endeavored to move the sympathy of the public in behalf of this poor Lopus, and we have done it from no selfish motive, and in no hope of reward, but only out of the commiseration we feel for one who has been suffering in solitude [begin page 451] while the careless world around him was absorbed in the pursuit of life's foolish pleasures, heedless whether he lived or died. If we have succeeded—if we have caused one sympathetic tear to flow from the tender eye of pity, we desire no richer recompense. They took Lopus to the station-house yesterday afternoon, and from thence he was transferred to the French Hospital. We learn that he is getting along first-rate, now.

[begin page 452]

If you have got a house, keep your eye on it, these times, for there is no knowing what moment it will go tramping around town. We meet these dissatisfied shanties every day marching boldly through the public streets on stilts and rollers, or standing thoughtfully in front of gin shops, or halting in quiet alleys and peering round corners, with a human curiosity, out of one eye, or one window if you please, upon the dizzy whirl and roar of commerce in the thoroughfareⒶemendation beyond. The houses have been taking something lately that is moving them a good deal. It is very mysterious, and past accounting for, but it cannot be helped. We have just been informed that an unknown house—two stories, with a kitchen—has stopped before Shark alley, in Merchant street, and seems to be calculating the chances of being able to scrouge through it into Washington street, and thus save the trouble of going around. We hardly think she can, and we had rather she would not try it; we should be sorry to see her get herself fast in that crevice, which is the newspaper reporter's shortest cut to the station-house and the courts. Without wishing to be meddlesome or officious, we would like to suggest that she would find it very comfortable and nice going round by Montgomery street, and plenty of room. Besides, there is nothing to be seen in Shark alley, if she is only on a little pleasure excursion.

[begin page 453]

The vagrant house we have elsewhere alluded to as prowling around Merchant street, near Shark alley—we mean Dunbar alley—finally started to go around by Montgomery street, but at the first move fell over and mashed in some windows and broke down a new awning attached to the house adjoining the “Ivy Green” saloon.

[begin page 454]

Since the recent extraordinary exposeé of the concerns of the Grass Valley Silver Mining Company, by which stockholders discovered, to their grief and dismay, that figures could lie as to what became of some of their assessments, and could also be ominously reticent as to what went with the balance, people have begun to discuss the possibility of inventing a plan by which they may be advised, from time to time, of the manner in which their money is being expended by officers of mining companies, to the end that they may seasonably check any tendency towards undue extravagance or dishonest expenditures that may manifest itself, instead of being compelled to wait a year or two in ignorance and suspense, to find at last that they have been bankrupted to no purpose. And it is time their creative talents were at work in this direction. The longer they sleep the dread sleep of the Grass Valley, the more terrible will be the awakening from it. Money is being squandered with a recklessness that knows no limit—that had a beginning, but seemingly hath no end, save in a beggarly minority of dividend-paying companies—and after these years of expectation and this waste of capital, what account of stewardship has been rendered unto the flayed stockholder? What does he know about the disposition that has been made of his money? What brighter promise has he now than in any by-gone time that he is not to go on hopelessly paying assessments and wondering what becomes of them, until Gabriel sounds his trumpet? The Hale & Norcross officers decide to sink a shaft. They levy forty thousand dollars. Next month they have a mighty good notion to go lower, and they levy a twenty thousand dollar assessment. Next month, the novelty of sinking the shaft has about worn off, and they think it would be nice to drift a while—twenty thousand dollars. The following month it occurs to them it would be so funny to pump a little—and they buy a forty thousand dollar pump. Thus it goes on for months and months, but the Hale & Norcross sends us no bullion, though most of the time [begin page 455] there is an encouraging rumor afloat that they are “right in the casing!” Take the Chollar Company, for instance. It seems easy on its children just now, but who does not remember its regular old monotonous assessment anthem? “Sixty dollars a foot! sixty dollars a foot! sixty dollars a foot!” month in and month out, till the persecuted stockholder howled again. The same way with the Best & Belcher, and the same way with three-fourths of the mines on the main lead, from Cedar Hill to Silver City. We could scarcely name them all in a single article, but we have given a specimen or so by which the balance may be measured. And what has gone with the money? We pause (a year or two) for a reply. Now, in some of the States, all banks are compelled to publish a monthly statement of their affairs. Why not make the big mining companies do the same thing? It would make some of them fearfully sick at first, but they would feel all the better for it in the long-runⒶemendation. The Legislature is not in session, and a law to this effect cannot now be passed; but if one company dare voluntarily to set the example, the balance would follow by pressure of circumstances. But that first bold company does not exist, perhaps; if it does, a grateful community will be glad to hear from it. Where is it? Let it come forward and offer itself as the sacrificial scape-goat to bear the sins of its fellows into the wilderness.

[begin page 456]

So there are company officers who are bold enough, fair enough, true enough to the interests entrusted to their keeping, to let stockholders, as well as all who may chance to become so, know the character of their stewardship, and whose records are white enough to bear inspection. We had not believed it, and we are glad that a Mining Company worthy of the name of Daniel Webster existed to save to us the remnant of our faith in the uprightness of these dumb and inscrutable institutions. We have nothing to fear now; all that was wanting was some one to take the lead. Other Companies will see that this monthly or quarterly exhibit of their [begin page 457] affairs is nothing but a simple act of justice to their stockholders and to others who may desire to become so. They will also see that it is policy to let the public know where invested money will be judiciously used and strictly accounted for; and, our word for it, Companies that dare to show their books, will soon fall into line and adopt the system of published periodical statements. In time it will become a custom, and custom is more binding, more impregnable, and more exacting than any law that was ever framed. In that day the Coso will be heard from; and so will Companies in Virginia, which sport vast and gorgeously-painted shaft and machinery houses, with costly and beautiful green chicken-cocks on the roof, which are able to tell how the wind blows, yet are savagely ignorant concerning dividends. So will other Companies come out and say what it cost to build their duck ponds; so will still others tell their stockholders why they paid sixty thousand dollars for machinery worth about half the money; another that we have in our eye will show what they did with an expensive lot of timbers, when they haven't got enough in their mine to shingle a chicken-coopⒶemendation with; and yet others will let us know if they are still “in the casing,” and why they levy a forty-thousand-dollar assessment every six weeks to run a drift with. Secretaries, Superintendents, and Boards of Trustees, that don't like the prospect, had better resign. The public have got precious little confidence in the present lot, and the public will back this assertion we are making in its name. Stockholders are very tired of being at the mercy of omnipotent and invisible officers, and are ripe for the inauguration of a safer and more sensible state of things. And when it is inaugurated, mining property will thrive again, and not before. Confidence is the mainstay of every class of commercial enterprise.

[begin page 458]

In consequence of the warm, close atmosphere which smothered the city at two o'clock yesterday afternoon, everybody expected to be shaken out of their boots by an earthquake before night, but up to the hour of our going to press the supernatural boot-jack had not arrived yet. That is just what makes it so unhealthy—the earthquakes are getting so irregular. When a community get used to a thing, they suffer when they have to go without it. However, the trouble cannot be remedied; we know of nothing that will answer as a substitute for one of those convulsions—to an unmarried man.

[begin page 459]

One of those singular freaks of Nature which, by reference to the dictionary, we find described as “the water or the descent of water that falls in drops from the clouds—a shower,” occurred here yesterday, and kept the community in a state of pleasant astonishment for the space of several hours. They would not have been astonished at an earthquake, though. Thus it will be observed that nothing accustoms one to a thing so readily as getting used to it. You will always notice that, in America. We were thinking this refreshing rain would make everybody happy. Not so the cows. An agricultural sharp informs us that yesterday's rain was a misfortune to California—that it will kill the dry grass upon which the cattle now subsist, and also the young grass upon which they were calculating to subsist hereafter. We know nothing whatever about the matter, but we do know that if what this gentleman says is strictly true, the inevitable deduction is that the cattle are out of luck. We stand to that.

[begin page 460]

A gloom pervaded the Police Court, as the sable visages of Mary Wilkinson and Maria Brooks, with their cloud of witnesses, entered within its consecrated walls, each to prosecute and defend respectively in counter charges of assault and battery. The cases were consolidated, and crimination and recrimination ruled the hour. Mary said she was a meek-hearted Christian, who loved her enemies, including Maria, and had prayed for her on the very morning of the day when the latter threw a pail of water and a rock against her. Maria said she didn't throw; that she wasn't a Christian herself, and that Mary had the very devil in her. The case would always have remained in doubt, but Mrs. Hammond overshadowed the Court, and flashed defiance at counsel, from her eyes, while indignation and eloquence burst from her heaving bosom, like the long pent up fires of a volcano, whenever any one presumed to intimate that her statement might be improved in point of credibility, by a slight explanation. Even the gravity of the Court was somewhat disturbed when three hundred weight of black majesty, hauteur, and conscious virtue, rolled on to the witness stand, like the fore quarter of a sunburnt whale, a living embodiment of Desdemona, Othello, Jupiter, Josh, and Jewhilikens. She appeared as counsel for Maria Brooks, and scornfully repudiated the relationship, when citizen Sam Platt, Esq.Ⓐemendation, prefaced his interrogation with the endearing, “Aunty.” “I'm not your Aunty,” she roared. “I'm Mrs. Hammond,” upon which the citizen S. P., Esq., repeated his assurances of distinguished regard, and caved a little. Mrs. Hammond rolled off the stand;Ⓐemendation and out of the Court room, like the fragment of a thunder cloud, leaving the “congregation,” as she called it, in convulsions. Mary Brooks and Maria Wilkinson were both convicted of assault and battery, and ordered to appear for sentence.

[begin page 461]

The era of our prosperity is about to dawn on us. If it don't it had orter. The jingle of coin will still be heard in our pockets and tills. It's all right. The Hard Money Association held an adjourned meeting at the Police Court room last night, for the express purpose of considering dollars. The meeting was an adjourned one. It staid adjournedⒶemendation. It wasn't anything else. The room was dimly lighted. It looked like the Hall of EolisⒶemendation. Silently sat some ten or a dozen of the galvanized protectors of our prosperity. They looked for all the world like an infernal council in conclave. They were dumb; but what great plans for the suppression of the green backed dragon were born in that silence still remains hid in the arcana of the mysterious cabal. They said nothing, they did nothing. Like fixed statues they sat, all wrapped in contemplation of their mighty scheme. They didn't adjourn, for from the first it was an adjourned meeting, and it staid adjourned. Soon they all left —parted quietly, mysteriously, awfully. The lights were turned out, and—nothing more. Money is still hard.

[begin page 462]

That industrious wild “Shiner” with his heavy brass machine for testing the strength of human muscles, is around again, in his original swallow-tailⒶemendation gray coat. That same wanderer, coat and machine, have been ceaselessly on the move throughout California and Washoe, for a year or more, and still they look none the worse for wear. And still the generous proposition goeth up from the wanderer's lips, in the by-places and upon the corners of the street: “Wan pull for a bit, jintlemenⒶemendation, an' anny man that pulls eighteen hundher' pounds can thry it over agin widoutⒶemendation expinse.” And still the wanderer seeketh the eighteen-hundred pounder up and down in the earth, and findeth him not; and still the public strive for that gratis pull, and still they are disappointed—still do they fall short of the terms by a matter of half a ton or so. Go your ways, and give the ubiquitous “Shiner” a chance to find the man upon whom it is his mission upon earth to confer the blessing of a second pull “widout expinse.”

[begin page 463]

As a proof that it is good policy to advertise, and that nothing that appears in a newspaper is left unread, we will state that the mere mention in yesterday's papers that the Cosmopolitan Hotel would be thrown open for public inspection, caused that place to be besieged at an early hour yesterday evening, by some thirty thousand men, women and children; and the chances are that more than as many more had read the invitation, but were obliged to forego the pleasure of accepting it. By eight o'clock, the broad halls and stairways of the building, from cellar to roof, were densely crowded, with people of all ages, sexes, characters, and conditions in life; and a similar army were collected in the street outside, unable to gain admission—there was no room for them. The lowest estimate we heard of the number of persons who passed into the Hotel was twenty thousand, and the highest sixty thousand; so we split the difference, and call it thirty thousand. And among this vast assemblage of refined gentlemen, elegant ladies, and tender children, was mixed a lot of thieves, ruffians, and vandals. They stole everything they could get their hands on—silverware from the dining-roomⒶemendation, hankerchiefs from gentlemenⒶemendation, veils and victorines from ladies, and even gobbled up sheets, shirts and pillow-cases in the laundry, and made off with them. They wantonly destroyed costly parlor ornaments, and pulled down and trampled under foot the handsome lace curtains of some of the windows. They “went through” Mr. Henning's room, and left him not even a sock or a boot. (We observed, a day or two ago, that he had a bushel and a half of the latter article stacked up at the foot of his bed.) The masses, wedged together in the halls and on the staircases, grew hot and angry, and smashed each other over the head with canes, and punched each other in the face with their fists, and to stop the thieving and save loss to helpless visitors, and get rid of the pickpockets, the gas had to be turned off in some parts of the house. At ten o'clock, when we were there, there was a constant stream of people passing out of the hotel, and [begin page 464] other streams pouring towards it from every direction, to be disappointed in their hopes of seeing the wonders within it, for the proprietors having already suffered to the extent of several thousands of dollars in thefts and damages to furniture, were unwilling to admit decent people any longer, for fear of another invasion of rascals among them. Another grand rush was expected to follow the letting out of the theatres. The Cosmopolitan still stands, however, and to-day it opens for good, and for the accommodation of all them that do eat and sleep, and have the wherewithal to pay for it.

[begin page 465]

Before disbanding for a fortnight's furlough, the boys connected with Rincon School had a grand dress parade, yesterday. They are classed into regular military companies, and officered as follows, by boys chosen from their own ranks: Company A, Captain John Welch; B, Captain John Warren; C, Captain Henry Tucker; D, Captain William Thompson; E, Captain Robinson; F, Captain Charles Redman; G, Captain Cyrus Myers; H, Captain Henry Tabor. Companies I and J have no regularly elected officers, we are told. The drummers of the regiment are two youngsters named Douglas Williams and John Seaborn, and their talent for making a noise amounts almost to inspiration. Both are first-class drummers. The Rincon boys have been carefully drilled in military exercises for a year, now, and have acquired a proficiency which is astonishing. They go through with the most elaborate manæuvres without hesitating and without making a mistake; to execute every order promptly and perfectly has become second nature to them, and requires no more reflection than it does to a practised boarder to go to dinner when he hears the gong ring. The word “drill” is the proper one—those boys' legs and arms have been drilled into a comprehension of those orders that they execute them mechanically, even though the restless mind may be thinking of anything else in the world at the moment. Professor Robinson has been the military instructor of the Rincon Regiment for several months past. The School exercises, earlier in the day, were very interesting, and consisted of dialogues, declamations, vocal and instrumental music, calisthenics, etc. “The Humors of the Draft,” a sort of comedy, illustrative of the shifts to which unwarlikeⒶemendation patriotsⒶemendation are put in order to compass exemption, was well played by a number of the School boys, and was received with shouts of laughter. Douglas Williams played, on his drum, a solo which would have been a happy accompaniment to one of our choicest earthquakes. A young girl sang that lugubrious ditty, “Wrap the Flag around me, Boys,” and the extraordinary purity [begin page 466] and sweetness of her voice actually made pleasant music of it, impossible as such a thing might seem to any one acquainted with that marvellous piece of composition. The Principal'sⒶemendation, Mr. Pelton's, heir, an American sovereign of eight Summers and no Winters at all, since his life has been passed here where it has pleased the Almighty to omit that season, gave a recitation in French, and one in German; and from the touching pathos and expression which he threw into the latter, and the liquid richness of his accent, we are satisfied the subject was a noble one and wrought in beautiful language, but we could not testify unqualifiedly, in this respect, without access to a translation. The Rincon School was mustered out of service, yesterday evening, for the term of two weeks.

[begin page 467]

California and Nevada Territory are flooded with distressed-lookingⒶemendation abortions done in oil, in water-colors, in crayon, in lithography, in photography, in sugar, in plaster, in marble, in wax, and in every substance that is malleable or chiselable, or that can be marked on, or scratched on, or painted on, or which by its nature can be compelled to lend itself to a relentless and unholy persecution and distortion of the features of the great and good man who is gone from our midst—Rev. Thomas Starr King. We do not believe these misguided artistic lunatics meant to confuse the lineaments, and finally destroy and drive out from our memories the cherished image of our lost orator, but just the contrary. We believe their motive was good, but we know their execution was atrocious. We look upon these blank, monotonous, over-fedⒶemendation and sleepy-looking pictures, and ask, with Dr. Bellows, “Where was the seat of this man's royalty?” But we ask in vain of these wretched counterfeits. There is no more life or expression in them than you may find in the soggy, upturned face of a pickled infant, dangling by the neck in a glass jar among the trophies of a doctor's back office, any day. But there is one perfect portrait of Mr. King extant, with all the tenderness and goodness of his nature, and all the power and grandeur of his intellect drawn to the surface, as it were, and stamped upon the features with matchless skill.Ⓐemendation This picture is in the possession of Dr. Bellows, and is the only one we have seen in which we could discover no substantial ground for fault finding. It is a life size outline photograph, elaborately wrought out and finished in crayon by Mrs. Frances Molineux Gibson, of this city, and has been presented by her to Rev. Dr. Bellows, to be sold for the benefit of the Sanitary Commission. It will probably be exhibited for a while at the Mechanics' Fair, after which it will be disposed of, as above mentioned. Dr. Bellows desires to keep it, and will do so if bids for it do not take altogether too high a flight.

[begin page 468]

The grand feature at the Bay View Park yesterday, was the hurdle race. There were three competitors, and the winner was Wilson's circus horse, “Sam.” Sam has lain quiet through all the pacings and trottings and runnings, and consented to be counted out, but this hurdle business was just his strong suit, and he stepped forward promptly when it was proposed. There was a much faster horse (Conflict) in the list, but what is natural talent to cultivation? Sam was educated in a circus, and understood his business; Conflict would pass him under way, trip and turn a double summerset over the next hurdle, and while he was picking himself up, the accomplished Sam would sail gracefully over the hurdle and slabber past his adversary with the easy indifference of conscious superiority. Conflict made the fastest time, but he fooled away too many summersets on the hurdles. The proverb saith that he that jumpeth fences with ye circus horse will aye come to grief.

[begin page 469]

A most wretched criminal was brought into the Police Court yesterday morning, on a charge of petty larceny. He stands between three and four feet in his shoes, and has arrived at the age of ten years. His name does not appear on the register, so the world must remain in ignorance of that. He is an orphan who has been provided with a home in a respectable family of this city, and is charged with having taken some chips and sticks from about Dr. Toland's fine new building, which it is supposed he uses in kindling the fires for the family he lives with. The person whose vigilance discovered grounds for suspecting this fatherless and motherless boy of the horrible crime, is a carpenter who works at the building. The county is indebted to him. The little fellow came into Court under a strong guard. He was terrified almost out of his senses, and looked as if he expected the Judge to order his head to be chopped off at once. The matterⒶemendation, if entertained at all, will be heard on Monday, and in the meantime the little boy will anticipate worlds of misery. It is a matter of wonder to some that a deliberate attempt to send an indefinite number of souls to Davy Jones' locker, by one who occupies a prominent position, escapes Judicial scrutiny, while the whole force conservatorial is hot foot in the chase after some little ragged shaver, some fledgling of St. Giles, unkempt and uncared for, who flits from corner to corner, and from hole to hole, as if fleeing from his own shadow. But such persons don't understand conservatorial policy. Let the hoary headedⒶemendation sinners go, they can get no worse, and soon will die off, but look sharply after the young crop. The old trunk will decay after a while and fall before the tempest, but the sapling must be hewn down.

[begin page 470]

This sterling literary weekly has changed hands, both in the matter of proprietorship and editorial management. Mr. Webb has sold the paper to Captain Ogden, a gentleman of fine literary attainments, an able writer, and the possessor of a happy bank account—three qualifications which, in the lump, cannot fail to insure the continued success of the Californian. Mr. Frank Brett HarteⒶemendation Ⓐtextual note will assume the editorship of the paper. Some of the most exquisite productions which have appeared in its pages emanatedⒶemendation from his pen, and are worthy to takeⒶemendation rank among even Dickens' best sketches. Taking all things in consideration, if the Californian dies now, it must be by the same process that resurrected Lazarus, which we are proud to be able to state was a miracle. After faithfully laboring night and day for about four months, and publishing fifteen numbers of the best paper in its particular department ever issued on this coast, Mr. Webb will now go and rest a while on the shores of Lake Tahoe. He has chosen to rest himself by fishing, and he is wise; for the fish in Lake Tahoe are not troublesome; they will let a man rest there till he rots, and never inflict upon him the fatigue of putting on a fresh bait. “Inigo” has our kindest wishes for his present and future happiness, though, rot or no rot.

[begin page 471]

The large oil painting in the picture store under the Russ House, of the “Blind Fiddler,” is the work of a very promising California artist, Mr.Ⓐemendation William Mulligan, of Healdsburg, formerly of St. Louis, Mo. In the main, both the conception and execution are good, but the latter is faulty in some of the minor details. Dr. Bellows has a smaller picture, however, by the same artist, which betrays the presence of genius of a high order in the hand that limned it. The subject is a dying drummer-boy, half sitting, half reclining, upon the battle field, with his body partly propped upon his broken drum, and his left arm hanging languidly over it. Near him lie his cap and his drum-sticks—unheeded, discarded, useless to him forever more. The dash of blood upon his shirt, the dreamy, away-at-homeⒶemendation look upon the features, the careless, resigned expression of the nerveless arm, tell the story. The colors in the picture are not gaudy enough to suit the popular taste, perhaps, but they represent nature truthfully, which is better. Mr. Mulligan has demonstrated in every work his hands have wrought, that he is an artist of more than common ability, and he deserves a generous encouragement. One or two of his pictures will probably be exhibited at the Mechanics' Fair now being held in this city.

[begin page 472]

The regular semi-monthly earthquake arrived at ten minutes to ten o'clock, yesterday morning. Thirty-six hours ahead of time. It is supposed it was sent earlier, to shake up the Democratic State Convention, but if this was the case, the calculation was awkwardly made, for it fell short by about two hours. The Convention did not meet until noon. Either the earthquake or the Convention, or both combined, made the atmosphere mighty dense and sulphurous all day. If it was the Democrats alone, they do not smell good, and it certainly cannot be healthy to have them around.

[begin page 473]

That a thing cannot be all black and all white at the same time, is as self evident as that two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time, and when a man makes a statement under the solemn sanction of an oath, the implication is that what he utters is a fact, the verity of which is not to be questioned. Notwithstanding witnesses are so often warned of the nature of an oath, and the consequences of perjury, yet it is a daily occurrence in the Police Court for men and women to mount the witness stand and swear to statements diametrically opposite. Swearing positively—leaving mere impressions out of the question—on the one hand that the horse was as black as night, and on the other that he was white as the driven snow. Two men have a fight, and a prosecution for assault and battery ensues. Each party comes up prepared to prove respectively and positively the guilt and innocence of the party accused. A swears point blank that B chased him a square and knocked him down, and exhibits wounds and blood to corroborateⒶemendation his statements. B brings a witness or two who saw the whole affair, from probably a distant stand point, and he testifies that nothing connected with the fight could have escaped his observation, and that it was A who chased B a square and knocked him down, and between these two solemn statements the Court has to decide. How can he do it?Ⓐemendation It is an impossibility, and thus many a culprit escapes punishment.Ⓐemendation There was a case in point Tuesday morning. A German named Rosenbaum prosecuted another German named Levy, for running into his wagon and breaking an axletree. He swore that he kept as far over to the right hand side of the street as a hole in the planking would permit, stopped his wagon when he saw the impending collision, and warned Levy off. Notwithstanding, Levy drove his vehicle against his wheel, breaking the axle, so as to require a new one which would cost twenty-five dollars. He stated also that Levy had been trying to injure him in that way for a long while. Levy brought a witness who swore that between Rosenbaum's wagon [begin page 474] and the hole in the street, there was room for a wagon or two to pass; that Rosenbaum challenged the collision, and that it was unavoidable on the part of Levy; that instead of stopping his wagon, the prosecuting witness drove ahead at a trot until the wagons became entangled, and that no damage whatever was done to Rosenbaum. On the whole, that instead of Levy running into Rosenbaum's wagon, Rosenbaum intentionally brought about the collision for the purpose of recovering damages off of Levy. The case was stronger than we have stated it,Ⓐemendation and the Judge could do nothing but dismiss the matter. That there was perjury on one side, was apparent. Yet this is but the history of one-half the cases that are adjudicated in the Police Court. There should be examples made of some of these reckless swearers. It would probably have a wholesome effect.

[begin page 475]

San Francisco beats the world for novelties; but the inventive faculties of her people are exercised on a specialty. We don't care much about creating things other countries can supply us with. We have on hand a vast quantity of a certain kind of material and we must work it up, and we do work it up often to an alarming pitch. Controversy is our forte. Californians can raise more legal questions and do the wager of combat in more ways than have been eliminated from the arcana of civil and military jurisprudence since Justinian wrote or Agamemnon fought. Suits—why we haven't names for half of them. A man has a spite at his neighborⒶemendation—and what man or man's wife hasn't—and he forthwith prosecutes him in the Police Court,Ⓐemendation for having onions for breakfast, under some ordinance or statutory provision having about as much relation to the case as the title page of Webster's Dictionary. And then, there's an array of witnesses who are well posted in everything else except the matter in controversy. And indefatigable attorneys enlighten the Court by drawing from the witnesses the whole detailed history of the last century. And then again we are in doubt about some little matter of personal or public convenience, and slap goes somebody into Court under duress of a warrant. If we want to determine the age of a child who has grown out of our knowledge, we commence a prosecution at once against some one else with children, and elicit from witnesses enough chronological information to fill a whole encyclopedia, to prove that our child of a doubtful age was cotemporary with the children of defendant, and thus approximate to the period of nativity sought for. A settlement of mutual accounts is arrived at by a prosecution for obtaining goods or money under false pretences. Partnership affairs are elucidated in a prosecution for grand larceny. A burglary simply indicates that a creditor called at the house of his debtor the night before market morning, to collect a small bill. We have nothing but a civil code. A portion of our laws are criminal in name only. We have no law for crime. [begin page 476] Cut, slosh around with pistols and dirk knives as you will, and the worst that comes of it is a petty charge of carrying concealed weapons; and murder is but an aggravated assault and battery. We go into litigation instinctively, like a young duck goes into the water. A man can'tⒶemendation dig a shovel full of sand out of a drift that threatens to overwhelm his property, nor put a fence around his lot that some person has once driven a wagon across, but what he is dragged before some tribunal to answer to a misdemeanor. Personal revenge, or petty jealousies and animosities, or else the pursuit of information under difficulties, keep up a heavy calendar, and the Judge of the Court spends three-fourths of his time listening to old women's quarrels, and tales that ought, in many cases, to consign the witnesses themselves to the prison cell, and dismissing prosecutions that are brought without probable cause, nor the shadow of it. A prosecuting people we are, and we are getting no better every day. The census of the city can almost be taken now from the Police Court calendar; and a month's attendance on that institution will give one a familiar acquaintance with more than half of our domestic establishments.

[begin page 477]

A charge of assault with a deadly weapon, preferred in the Police Court yesterday, against Jacob Friedberg, was dismissed, at the request of all parties concerned, because of the scandal it would occasion to the Jewish Church to let the trial proceed, both the assaulted man and the man committing the assault being consecrated servants of that Church. The weaponⒶemendation used was a butcher-knife, with a blade more than two feet long, and as keen as a razor. The men were butchers, appointed by dignitaries of the Jewish Church to slaughter and inspect all beef intended for sale to their brethren, and in a dispute some time ago, one of them partly split the other's head open, from the top of the forehead to the end of his nose, with the sacred knife, and also slashed one of his hands. From these wounds the sufferer has only just recovered. The Jewish butcher is not appointed to his office in this country, but is chosen abroad by a college of Rabbis and sent hither. He kills beeves designed for consumption by Israelites, (or any one else, if they choose to buy,) and after careful examination, if he finds that the animal is in any way diseased, it is condemned and discarded; if the contrary, the seal of the Church is placed upon it, and it is permitted to be sent into the market—a custom that might be adopted with profit by all sects and creeds. It is said that the official butcher always assures himself that the sacred knife is perfectly sharp and without a wire edge, before he cuts a bullock's throat; he then draws it with a single lightning stroke (and at any rate not more than two strokes are admissible,) and if the knife is still without a wire edge after the killing, the job has been properly done; but if the contrary is the case, it is adjudged that a bone has been touched and pain inflicted upon the animal, and consequently the meat cannot receive the seal of approval and must be thrown aside. It is a quaint custom of an ancient Church, and sounds strangely enough to modern ears. Considering that the [begin page 478] dignity of the Church was in some sense involved in the misconduct of its two servants, the dismissal of the case without a hearing was asked and granted.

[begin page 479]

Witnesses in the Police Court, who expect to be questioned on the part of the prosecution, should always come prepared to answer the following questions: “Was you there, at the time?” “Did you see it done, and if you did, how do you know?” “City and County of San Francisco?” “Is your mother living, and if so, is she well?” “You say the defendant struck the plaintiff with a stick. Please state to the Court what kind of a stick it was?” “Did it have the bark on, and if so, what kind of bark did it have on?” “Do you consider that such a stick would be just as good with the bark on, as with it off, or vicy versy?” “Why?” “I think you said it occurred in the City and County of San Francisco?” “You say your mother has been dead seventeen years—native of what place, and why?” “You don't know anything about this assault and battery, do you?” “Did you ever study astronomy?—hard, isn't it?” “You have seen this defendant before, haven't you?” “Did you ever slide on a cellar door when you were a boy?” “Well—that's all.” “Stay: did this occur in the City and County of San Francisco?” The Prosecuting Attorney may mean well enough, but meaning well and doing well are two very different things. His abilities are of the mildest description, and do not fit him for a position like the one he holds, where energy, industry, tact, shrewdness, and some little smattering of law, are indispensable to the proper fulfilment of its duties. Criminals leak through his fingers every day like water through a sieve. He does not even afford a cheerful amount of competition in business to the sharp lawyers over whose heads he was elected to be set up as an ornamental effigy in the Police Court. He affords a great deal less than no assistance to the Judge, who could convict sometimes if the District Attorney would remain silent, or if the law had not hired him at a salary of two hundred and fifty dollars a month to unearth the dark and ominous fact that the “offence was committed in the City and County of San Francisco.” The man means well enough, but he [begin page 480] don't know how; he makes of the proceedings in behalf of a sacred right and justice in the Police Court, a drivelling farce, and he ought to show his regard for the public welfare by resigning.