In a thousand
towns and different epochs I might have had occasion to
behold the cowardice and carnage of street-fighting;
where else, but only there and then, could I have
enjoyed a view of Coleman (the intermittent despot)
walking meditatively up hill in a quiet part of town,
with a very rolling gait, and slapping gently his great
thigh?
MINORA CANAMUS. This historic figure stalks
silently through a corner of the San Francisco of my
memory. The rest is bric-a-brac, the reminiscences of
a vagrant sketcher. My delight was much in slums.
"Little Italy" was a haunt of mine. There I would look
in at the windows of small eating-shops transported
bodily from Genoa or Naples, with their macaroni, and
chianti flasks, and portraits of Garibaldi, and
coloured political caricatures; or (entering in) hold
high debate with some ear-ringed fisher of the bay as
to the designs of "Mr. Owstria" and "Mr. Rooshia." I
was often to be observed (had there been any to observe
me) in that dis-peopled, hill-side solitude of "Little
Mexico," with its crazy wooden houses, endless crazy
wooden stairs, and perilous mountain-goat paths in the
sand.
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