Backwards March. 335 



work with the half-honest wickedness of San Francisco than with the down- 

 cellar, smutty and cowardly degradation of some other great cities. 



Such is my diagnosis of the case. As to the average mental force of 

 society on the Pacific slope, and particularly in the chief metropolis, I should 

 rank it very high. I am inclined to believe that the San Franciscans are 

 among the most intellectual peoples of the world. They seize industrial 

 and social problems with a vigor and ability quite unparalleled, and their 

 courage is equal to their intellectual vehemence. It is not the policy of this 

 people to trifle long with any Gordian knot. They simply cut it, and then 

 'boldly claim that a cut is better than an untie, anyhow. I am willing to rat- 

 ify this opinion myself. To show skill in disentanglement and to save whip- 

 cord is a good thing in its way, but takes time, and time is money and de- 

 velopment and fortune. Inasmuch, therefore, as life is ghort, out with 

 your sword and cut. The knees of all complication knock together when- 

 ever you get out your knife. 



It is needless that I should review the tremendous enterprises which 

 are a part of the history of San Francisco. Her public life has been one of 

 ■extraordinary power and persistency. She has her gr'^up of millionaires, 

 scarcely less conspicuous, and not at all less fertile in resources, than are the 

 financial nabobs of New York. These men, nearly all, came into the State 

 as mere adventurers. They were big-boned, big-brained, reckless boys, who 

 looked upon this western world as a battle-field. Their minds, in the strug- 

 gle that ensued, had all the splendor of freedom and the gratification of 

 victory. They wrought as they would with the turbulent elements which 

 roared in the chaos along the shores of the sea. Perhaps they have been 

 unscrupulous ; doubtless their hoppers have swallowed up hundreds of 

 smaller fortunes and thousands of human lives ; but they have had the 

 virtue of vigor and the worth of an untrammeled manhood that is entitled 

 to no small meed of praise. 



Some of these men, like Stanford, have turned philanthropists in their 

 old days, and are endeavoring with all their might to regenerate the society 

 of California by means of their money. I hope that they will succeed. My 

 sympathies are greatly enlisted with the Stanford University ; and I have 

 already had occasion to try my hand at prophecy respecting the Lick ob- 

 servat ry. Old James Lick was himself a character. He was what the peo- 

 ple of the Wabash valley would call a hard case. In process of time the 

 biographers, after their usual manner, will try to lie him white ; but they 

 will have a hard task on their hands. One time he directed his workmen 

 to set out a prune orchard for him, putting the tops of the trees in the 

 ground and the roots in the air ; and when about two-thirds of them broke 

 his orders by planting the trees as they ought to be, he drove every one of 

 them out of the orchard. It was he who, in his old age, built a mill at San 

 Jos^ in which the hoppers were made out of rosewood and mahogany — this 

 for the reason that in his youth he had loved a miller's girl, or thought he 

 did, in Pennsylvania, and the miller had incontinently kicked him out. 



