The Trail of 98 | Page 5

spirit of the gypsy. The joy of youth and health was brawling in my
veins. A few thistledown years, said I, would not matter. And there was
Stevenson and his glamorous islands winning me on.
So it came about I stood solitary on the beach by the seal rocks, with a
thousand memories confusing in my head. There was the long train ride
with its strange pictures: the crude farms, the glooming forests, the
gleaming lakes that would drown my whole country, the aching plains,
the mountains that rip-sawed the sky, the fear-made-eternal of the
desert. Lastly, a sudden, sunlit paradise, California.
I had lived through a week of wizardry such as I had never dreamed of,
and here was I at the very throne of Western empire. And what a place
it was, and what a people--with the imperious mood of the West
softened by the spell of the Orient and mellowed by the glamour of Old
Spain. San Francisco! A score of tongues clamoured in her streets and
in her byways a score of races lurked austerely. She suckled at her
breast the children of the old grey nations and gave them of her spirit,
that swift purposeful spirit so proud of past achievement and so
convinced of glorious destiny.
I marvelled at the rush of affairs and the zest of amusement. Every one
seemed to be making money easily and spending it eagerly. Every one
was happy, sanguine, strenuous. At night Market Street was a dazzling
alley of light, where stalwart men and handsome women jostled in and
out of the glittering restaurants. Yet amid this eager, passionate life I
felt a dreary sense of outsideness. At times my heart fairly ached with
loneliness, and I wandered the pathways of the park, or sat forlornly in

Portsmouth Square as remote from it all as a gazer on his mountain top
beneath the stars.
I became a dreamer of the water front, for the notion of the South Seas
was ever in my head. I loafed in the sunshine, sitting on the pier-edge,
with eyes fixed on the lazy shipping. These were care-free,
irresponsible days, and not, I am now convinced, entirely misspent. I
came to know the worthies of the wharfside, and plunged into an
under-world of fascinating repellency. Crimpdom eyed and tempted me,
but it was always with whales or seals, and never with pearls or copra. I
rubbed shoulders with eager necessity, scrambled for free lunches in
frowsy bar-rooms, and amid the scum and débris of the waterside found
much food for sober thought. Yet at times I blamed myself for thus
misusing my days, and memories of Glengyle and Mother and Garry
loomed up with reproachful vividness.
I was, too, a seeker of curious experience, and this was to prove my
undoing. The night-side of the city was unveiled to me. With the
assurance of innocence I wandered everywhere. I penetrated the
warrens of underground Chinatown, wondering why white women
lived there, and why they hid at sight of me. Alone I poked my way
into the opium joints and the gambling dens. Vice, amazingly
unabashed, flaunted itself in my face. I wondered what my grim,
Covenanting ancestors would have made of it all. I never thought to
have seen the like, and in my inexperience it was like a shock to me.
My nocturnal explorations came to a sudden end. One foggy midnight,
coming up Pacific Street with its glut of saloons, I was clouted
shrewdly from behind and dropped most neatly in the gutter. When I
came to, very sick and dizzy in a side alley, I found I had been robbed
of my pocketbook with nearly all my money therein. Fortunately I had
left my watch in the hotel safe, and by selling it was not entirely
destitute; but the situation forced me from my citadel of pleasant
dreams, and confronted me with the grimmer realities of life.
I became a habitué of the ten-cent restaurant. I was amazed to find how
excellent a meal I could have for ten cents. Oh for the uncaptious
appetite of these haphazard days! With some thirty-odd dollars

standing between me and starvation, it was obvious I must become a
hewer of wood and a drawer of water, and to this end I haunted the
employment offices. They were bare, sordid rooms, crowded by men
who chewed, swapped stories, yawned and studied the blackboards
where the day's wants were set forth. Only driven to labour by dire
necessity, their lives, I found, held three phases--looking for work,
working, spending the proceeds. They were the Great Unskilled, face to
face with the necessary evil of toil.
One morning, on seeking my favourite labour bureau, I found an
unusual flutter among the bench-warmers. A big contractor wanted
fifty men