The draughty, rowdy city of San Francisco, the bustling
office where my friend Jim paced like a caged lion
daily between ten and four, even (at times) the
retrospect of Paris, faded in comparison. Many a man
less tempted would have thrown up all to realise his
visions; but I was by nature unadventurous and
uninitiative; to divert me from all former paths and
send me cruising through the isles of paradise, some
force external to myself must be exerted; Destiny
herself must use the fitting wedge; and, little as I
deemed it, that tool was already in her hand of brass.
I sat, one afternoon, in the corner of a great, glassy,
silvered saloon, a free lunch at my one elbow, at the
other a "conscientious nude" from the brush of local
talent; when, with the tramp of feet and a sudden buzz
of voices, the swing-doors were flung broadly open, and
the place carried as by storm. The crowd which thus
entered (mostly seafaring men, and all prodigiously
excited) contained a sort of kernel or general centre
of interest, which the rest merely surrounded and
advertised, as children in the Old World surround and
escort the Punch-and-Judy man; the word went round the
bar like wildfire that these were Captain Trent and the
survivors of the British brig FLYING SCUD, picked
up by a British war-ship on Midway Island, arrived that
morning in San Francisco Bay, and now fresh from making
the necessary declarations.
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