144 HISTORY OF PASADENA. 



Post-ofiice, Watson's meat market, and the laundry of John C. Yuen, Esq., 

 lately from China. 



Other numbers of The Reservoir were prepared by D. M. Berry, Clar- 

 ence Martin, and Mrs. Dr. Conger. I found no copy of Berry's or Martin's 

 numbers, and only some fragments of Mrs. Conger's. These latter were es- 

 says of a high order of merit — but not humorous, and not comprising any 

 special points of Pasadena history — hence not quoted. (Mrs. Conger pre- 

 pared No. 4, dated February 24, 1877, and also No. 8, dated August 3, 

 1878.) 



GRASSHOPPKR TALK. 



Charles A. Gardner wrote up a conversation which he heard among 

 " old settlers " about the grasshopper trouble in the colony days [1876], and 

 I quote the gist of his article from Pasadena Star of May 15, 1889 : 



Some one started the question of grasshoppers and a visitation which 

 the colony had endured from them long ago, before Prof. Holder came to 

 scare them away with hard Latin names. 



Says one, " I've seen the time when I would have left Pasadena if I 

 could have got away." 



" No ? " says the tenderfoot ; " when was that — when you were in the 

 jug?" 



"No, when the grasshoppers got us, ten or twelve years ago. They 

 were as big as blackbirds and ate everything from the ground up." 



" Do you remember," says another, " the fire we built to kill them, and 

 how it got away from us and burned over the sheepherder's land ? " 



" Yes," responded a bald-headed reprobate, who is generally not far off 

 when a pioneer yarn is in the stocks, ' ' and how mad he got about it and 

 threatened to sue us ; kept sending us threatening letters for six months. ' ' 



" We started the fire down in Baker's place," resumed the first sinner, 

 " with the expectation that the road would stop it from the pasture lands above; 

 but it jumped two roads and we had only one more to go. Finally, by plow- 

 ing ahead of it we got it stopped, and some of the furrows are there yet. It 

 roasted the grasshoppers, you bet, and I remember one day while we were 



looking at the wreck. Doctor said, ' I've often heard of the Indians 



eating them ; I've a notion to see how they taste.' So he reached down and 

 hauled up a fat one out of the cinders, pulled off a hind leg and gave it a 

 bite. It was pretty good, and I'm inclined to think they'd make good 

 eating. Well, these fellows were the occasion of my wanting to leave. It 

 seems that it was only a local visitation. They didn't extend down into the 

 lower valley, and if I could have sold out that year I should have gone down 

 to Alhambra. As it was, they destroyed every green thing that was not in 

 some way protected. Hollingsworth had just opened his store then (1876), 

 and I got of him a lot of paper sacks which I put over my trees, first cutting 

 off the tops of the trees and tying the sack down close around the trunks. 



But the worst joke happened to Dr. . He got some cheese-cloth and 



wrapped it around his trees, sewing it with long stitches. The stitches were 

 too long, however, for on examination one day he found these tree-covers 

 full of the hoppers, which had crawled through the stitches and were eating 

 up his trees in the very shelter of the covers he had made to keep them off. 

 The Doctor's rage at this knew no bounds. ' Oh, you sons-of-guns ! ' said 



