Amanda Douglas - A Little Girl in Old San Francisco

The ruins were startling even now. Then the party turned, crossed Market Street and came into Spear Street. Here there was a rambling frame building that had been added to several times, two stories for the most part, but a long ell of only one story. The main end bore the name of "Dawson House." It was not a hotel, and had no bar, that usual accompaniment. Round in the next street, Mr. Dawson had a clubhouse that supplied this want, and all games of chance, but this place was of the better sort.

The Farnsworths had gone to friends only a few squares from the wharf. Mr. Dawson made friends at once with young Folsom and offered him a position.

"I'm in for the gold fields," he declared with boyish eagerness.

"You'd better consider a day or two," suggested his mother.

"And I'll take the mother, too, if she is as good a housekeeper as she looks to be," Mr. Dawson subjoined laughingly. "If I don't, young fellow, some man will snap your mother up before you'll have a chance to see the color of his eyes."

"Well, here are four husbandless women," she retorted gayly. "He could have a choice."

They were ushered into a spacious room with a painted floor and nondescript furnishing. In one corner was a large desk at which sat a clerk. This opened into a dining room, in which the long table was seldom without a guest. Several were seated there now. On the other side were two smaller rooms tolerably well furnished, one a sleeping chamber.

"You'll find we're suffering from the want of woman's hands and woman's wit. I could hardly believe my wife had consented to come. You see those who are worth anything are soon offered homes of their own, and the others – " He made a peculiar little gesture, that elicited a shrewd smile from Jason Chadsey.

It was comforting to find a place of refuge so soon, they all thought. On the second floor were lodging rooms for the better class. The ell was fitted up with rows of bunks, and there was seldom a vacancy by midnight.

Laverne kept tight hold of Uncle Jason's hand, and when Mr. Dawson smiled over to her, half hid her face on Uncle Jason's ample frame.

"Are we all going to live here?" she asked in a low tone.

"For a little while, I think. We would not want to go away alone. And there must be some one to keep the house when I get one."

"But you know that I helped mother, oh, for a long while. Sometimes I chopped up the wood. And in the autumn I dug the potatoes and husked the corn, but we had to kill the poor hens, after all," and she sighed. "I swept up the house, too. Oh, I can do a great many things."

He took the slim little hand in his and tried to smile over her eagerness, but his heart ached as he thought of her mother, and the hardships he could not save.

"Will it be winter soon?" she inquired.

"Not a Maine winter, my child. I believe there is no real winter."

"Everything looks queer and dried up, yet it isn't cold. And what a great city, it is almost as large as New York."

He laughed at that, then he was grave a moment. "It may be as great, some day. The Pacific will be a big rival to the Atlantic."

"To think we are clear over here! Why don't they build a railroad – just so?" and she made a mark with her small finger.

"No doubt that will come also."

They made arrangements about staying for the present. It seemed queer to the child that the friend she had known so long should be Mr. Dawson's wife. Already she was giving some orders and telling what she wanted done, and did not seem a bit afraid of the portly man who could speak so sharply to the Chinese servants.

Laverne thought them very odd. She had only seen pictures of them before. They walked so softly in their pointed slippers, and looked a little like women in their loose blue shirts with hanging sleeves. The long queue twisted around their heads, and their slanting eyes seemed weird enough.

She saw many other queer people in their walk back to the boat. Uncle Jason thought it too long, but she pleaded so to go. There were other curious dark-eyed and dark-skinned men, small and bright Japanese she came to know, and tall Spaniards in picturesque attire with handsome sashes about their waists; Indians, too, and a group of squaws girt about with blankets, two carrying their babies on their backs, and these made her think of the Maine clear across the continent, for you occasionally saw them there.

The old vessel seemed almost like home to her. They gathered up their luggage and that belonging to the ladies and ordered it sent to the Dawson House. Then they went up on Telegraph Hill, and half the world seemed spread out before them. The sun was shining in well-nigh blinding brilliancy. There was the narrow passageway that hardly looked its real width, there was the northern peninsula, Mount Tamalpais, Belvidere, Sausalito, and all the places she was to come to know so well. And there over the bay were the low spurs of the Coast Range, at whose feet were to spring up towns and cities. The bay looked to her like a smaller ocean. But boats were plying back and forth. And they could see the other hills about, and the town spreading here and there outside of the burned district.

Suddenly she said she was very tired, and her steps lagged a little. Uncle Jason would have been glad to carry her, he had occasionally carried greater burdens in times of peril, but that would be hardly admissible, they were going downhill too, which was easier. She had not seen all the strange people yet, for they met a group of Portuguese sailors with big hoop earrings, who were gesticulating fiercely, and some Russians with high caps and black, bushy beards. She was glad she had studied so much geography on shipboard, and she began to feel quite wise about different countries.

When she reached their present home she begged that she might go to bed. She did not want to eat even a tempting bit of cake. Mrs. Dawson took her into her room and put a pillow on the lounge, and while the others talked and planned she slept soundly.

"What a pretty child she is," Mr. Dawson said. "You will have to watch her closely that no one steals her."

"Oh!" Uncle Jason said thoughtfully. But in this wild, bustling life few would want to be burdened with a child not belonging to them.

When Laverne woke there was a queer, rushing, rustling sound, and it was dark like twilight. Where was she? What was happening? Then she sprang up and remembered. The ladies were talking in the next room. Oh, it rained and the wind seemed blowing a gale.

"Oh, what a nice sleep you have had!" exclaimed Mrs. Dawson. "And now you must be hungry, though we shall have dinner in a very short time. You look rested," and she smiled cheerfully.

"Yes, I am. I don't know what made me so tired." She had not climbed a hill in a long while.

"We didn't have any hills to climb on shipboard, and in all these months we did get out of practice," said Miss Holmes. "I was tired as well. And now the rainy season has begun, and Mr. Dawson has been saying that in a week or two the country will look like spring."

"And won't there be any winter? Though I don't like winter very much," she added naïvely. "Only the sledding and skating."

"I shouldn't care to live in Maine," and Miss Gaines gave a little shiver. "All my life I have longed for a warm winter climate. And if this doesn't suit, I shall go further south."

"You women without husbands are very independent," laughed Mrs. Dawson.

"You certainly can go where you like if you have money enough to take you there," was the reply. "Verne, come sit here and tell me if you like San Francisco as well as the ship and the voyage."

"It's queer and such lots of queer people, and how they can understand each other I can't see, for they all seem to talk different. I'd rather not live on a ship all my life."