第18章 THE RUINS OF SAN FRANCISCO(2)

Everything tends to show that the calamity was totally unlooked for.We quote the graphic language of Schwappelfurt:--"The morning of the tremendous catastrophe probably dawned upon the usual restless crowd of gold-getters intent upon their several avocations.The streets were filled with the expanded figures of gayly dressed women,acknowledging with coy glances the respectful salutations of beaux as they gracefully raised their remarkable cylindrical head-coverings,a model of which is still preserved in the Honolulu Museum.The brokers had gathered at their respective temples.The shopmen were exhibiting their goods.The idlers,or 'Bummers,'--a term applied to designate an aristocratic,privileged class who enjoyed immunities from labor,and from whom a majority of the rulers are chosen,--were listlessly regarding the promenaders from the street-corners or the doors of their bibulous temples.Aslight premonitory thrill runs through the city.The busy life of this restless microcosm is arrested.The shopkeeper pauses as he elevates the goods to bring them into a favorable light,and the glib professional recommendation sticks on his tongue.In the drinking-saloon the glass is checked half-way to the lips;on the streets the promenaders pause.Another thrill,and the city begins to go down,a few of the more persistent topers tossing off their liquor at the same moment.Beyond a terrible sensation of nausea,the crowds who now throng the streets do not realize the extent of the catastrophe.The waters of the bay recede at first from the centre of depression,assuming a concave shape,the outer edge of the circle towering many thousand feet above the city.Another convulsion,and the water instantly resumes its level.The city is smoothly ingulfed nine thousand feet below,and the regular swell of the Pacific calmly rolls over it.Terrible,"says Schwappelfurt,in conclusion,"as the calamity must have been,in direct relation to the individuals immediately concerned therein,we cannot but admire its artistic management;the division of the catastrophe into three periods,the completeness of the cataclysms,and the rare combination of sincerity of intention with felicity of execution."A NIGHT AT WINGDAM.

I had been stage-ridden and bewildered all day,and when we swept down with the darkness into the Arcadian hamlet of "Wingdam,"Iresolved to go no farther,and rolled out in a gloomy and dyspeptic state.The effects of a mysterious pie,and some sweetened carbonic acid known to the proprietor of the "Half-Way House"as "lemming sody,"still oppressed me.Even the facetiae of the gallant expressman who knew everybody's Christian name along the route,who rained letters,newspapers,and bundles from the top of the stage,whose legs frequently appeared in frightful proximity to the wheels,who got on and off while we were going at full speed,whose gallantry,energy,and superior knowledge of travel crushed all us other passengers to envious silence,and who just then was talking with several persons and manifestly doing something else at the same time,--even this had failed to interest me.So I stood gloomily,clutching my shawl and carpet-bag,and watched the stage roll away,taking a parting look at the gallant expressman as he hung on the top rail with one leg,and lit his cigar from the pipe of a running footman.I then turned toward the Wingdam Temperance Hotel.

It may have been the weather,or it may have been the pie,but Iwas not impressed favorably with the house.Perhaps it was the name extending the whole length of the building,with a letter under each window,making the people who looked out dreadfully conspicuous.Perhaps it was that "Temperance"always suggested to my mind rusks and weak tea.It was uninviting.It might have been called the "Total Abstinence"Hotel,from the lack of anything to intoxicate or inthrall the senses.It was designed with an eye to artistic dreariness.It was so much too large for the settlement,that it appeared to be a very slight improvement on out-doors.It was unpleasantly new.There was the forest flavor of dampness about it,and a slight spicing of pine.Nature outraged,but not entirely subdued,sometimes broke out afresh in little round,sticky,resinous tears on the doors and windows.It seemed to me that boarding there must seem like a perpetual picnic.As Ientered the door,a number of the regular boarders rushed out of a long room,and set about trying to get the taste of something out of their mouths,by the application of tobacco in various forms.Afew immediately ranged themselves around the fireplace,with their legs over each other's chairs,and in that position silently resigned themselves to indigestion.Remembering the pie,I waived the invitation of the landlord to supper,but suffered myself to be conducted into the sitting-room."Mine host"was a magnificent-looking,heavily bearded specimen of the animal man.He reminded me of somebody or something connected with the drama.I was sitting beside the fire,mutely wondering what it could be,and trying to follow the particular chord of memory thus touched,into the intricate past,when a little delicate-looking woman appeared at the door,and,leaning heavily against the casing,said in an exhausted tone,"Husband!"As the landlord turned toward her,that particular remembrance flashed before me in a single line of blank verse.It was this:"Two souls with but one single thought,two hearts that beat as one."It was Ingomar and Parthenia his wife.I imagined a different denouement from the play.Ingomar had taken Parthenia back to the mountains,and kept a hotel for the benefit of the Alemanni,who resorted there in large numbers.Poor Parthenia was pretty well fagged out,and did all the work without "help."She had two "young barbarians,"a boy and a girl.She was faded,but still good-looking.