"Is it yourself, Judge Girvin?" replied McGlynn, "I'm just telling this young man that he can't have the job of driving my little California canaries for but one day because I've hired a fine lawyer from the East at two hundred and seventy-five a month to drive my mules for me."
"You have done well," Judge Girvin in his grave, courteous tones. "For the whole business of a lawyer is to know how to manage mules and asses so as to make them pay!"
I drove to the beach, and speedily charged my wagon with as large a load as prudence advised me. The firm of Howard Mellin & Company proved to have quarters in a frame shack on what is now Montgomery Street. It was only a short haul, but a muddy one. Nearly opposite their store a new wharf was pushing its way out into the bay. I could see why this and other firms clung so tenaciously to their locations on rivers of bottomless mud in preference to moving up into the drier part of town.
I enjoyed my day hugely. My eminent position on the driver's seat--eminent both actually and figuratively--gave me a fine opportunity to see the sights and to enjoy the homage men seemed inclined to accord the only wagon in town. The feel of the warm air was most grateful. Such difficulties as offered served merely to add zest to the job. At noon I ate some pilot bread and a can of sardines bought from my employers. About two o'clock the wind came up from the sea, and the air filled with the hurrying clouds of dust.
In my journeys back and forth I had been particularly struck by the bold, rocky hill that shut off the view toward the north. Atop this hill had been rigged a two-armed semaphore, which, one of the clerks told me, was used to signal the sight of ships coming in the Golden Gate. The arms were variously arranged according to the rig or kind of vessel. Every man, every urchin, every Chinaman, even, knew the meaning of these various signals. A year later, I was attending a theatrical performance in the Jenny Lind Theatre on the Plaza. In the course of the play an actor rushed on frantically holding his arms outstretched in a particularly wooden fashion, and uttering the lines, "What means this, my lord!"
"A side-wheel steamer!" piped up a boy's voice from the gallery.