The Trail of 98 Read Free

vocation. My mind, cramful of book notions, craved for the larger life. I was
valiantly mad for adventure; to fare forth haphazardly; to come upon naked
danger; to feel the bludgeonings of mischance; to tramp, to starve, to sleep
under the stars. It was the callow boy-idea perpetuated in the man, and it was
to lead me a sorry dance. But I could not overbear it. Strong in me was the
spirit of the gypsy. The joy of youth and health was brawling in my veins. A few
thistledown years, said I, would not matter. And there was Stevenson and his
glamorous islands winning me on.
    So it came about I stood solitary on the beach by the seal rocks, with a
thousand memories confusing in my head. There was the long train ride with its
strange pictures: the crude farms, the glooming forests, the gleaming lakes that
would drown my wholecountry, the aching plains, the mountains that rip-sawed the
sky, the fear-made-eternal of the desert. Lastly, a sudden, sunlit paradise,
California.
    I had lived through a week of wizardry such as I had never dreamed of, and
here was I at the very throne of Western empire. And what a place it was, and
what a peoplewith the imperious mood of the West softened by the spell of the
Orient and mellowed by the glamour of Old Spain. San Francisco! A score of
tongues clamoured in her streets and in her byways a score of races lurked
austerely. She suckled at her breast the children of the old grey nations and
gave them of her spirit, that swift purposeful spirit so proud of past
achievement and so convinced of glorious destiny.
    I marvelled at the rush of affairs and the zest of amusement. Every one
seemed to be making money easily and spending it eagerly. Every one was happy,
sanguine, strenuous. At night Market Street was a dazzling alley of light, where
stalwart men and handsome women jostled in and out of the glittering
restaurants. Yet amid this eager, passionate life I felt a dreary sense of
outsideness. At times my heart fairly ached with loneliness, and I wandered the
pathways of the park, or sat forlornly in Portsmouth Square as remote from it
all as a gazer on his mountain top beneath the stars.
    I became a dreamer of the water front, for the notion of the South Seas was
ever in my head. I loafed in the sunshine, sitting on the pier-edge, with eyes
fixed on the lazy shipping. These were care-free,irresponsible days, and not, I am now convinced,
entirely misspent. I came to know the worthies of the wharfside, and plunged
into an under-world of fascinating repellency. Crimpdom eyed and tempted me, but
it was always with whales or seals, and never with pearls or copra. I rubbed
shoulders with eager necessity, scrambled for free lunches in frowsy bar-rooms,
and amid the scum and debris of the waterside found much food for sober thought.
Yet at times I blamed myself for thus misusing my days, and memories of Glengyle
and Mother and Garry loomed up with reproachful vividness.
    I was, too, a seeker of curious experience, and this was to prove my undoing.
The night-side of the city was unveiled to me. With the assurance of innocence I
wandered everywhere. I penetrated the warrens of underground Chinatown,
wondering why white women lived there, and why they hid at sight of me. Alone I
poked my way into the opium joints and the gambling dens. Vice, amazingly
unabashed, flaunted itself in my face. I wondered what my grim, Covenanting
ancestors would have made of it all. I never thought to have seen the like, and
in my inexperience it was like a shock to me.
    My nocturnal explorations came to a sudden end. One foggy midnight, coming up
Pacific Street with its glut of saloons, I was clouted shrewdly from behind and
dropped most neatly in the gutter. When I came to, very sick and dizzy in a side
alley, I found I had been robbed of my pocketbook with nearly all my money
therein. Fortunately I had leftmy watch in the hotel safe, and by selling it was not entirely
destitute; but