"All's not Gold that Glitters;" or, The Young Californian

by Alice B. Haven

He woke with a strange roar, sounding through his dreams, and half roused, thought he was at sea, homeward bound, and the vessel was nearing breakers. But he was in the midst of a more awful storm, than any which ever swept over the ocean. A thick, choking cloud, a quick crackling of fire, a heat so intense that he groped blindly along, his hands blistering on every thing he touched, were all around him, and he had scarcely reached the outer air, when a volume of flame and smoke, red and dense, burst through the adjoining roof, and swept down on the pine building from which he had escaped, with a shower of sparks and crash of falling timber. The scene was more fearful, that no help could avail to check the advancing flames. Men worked with desperate energy to save their goods and papers, but were driven back, square after square, and street after street, by the rush and roar of the fiery tide, that ran along the dry, wooden pavements, like water forcing a channel from the hills, and sweeping down all before it. Some shut themselves up in buildings that were thought fire-proof, and perished with the goods they had heaped together for safety. Men cried, and wrung their hands like women, when they saw their property burning like tinder, before their eyes, and the offer of boundless rewards, could bring them no help. When noonday came, and the fury of the fiery storm went down, the very heart of the town was desolated. Heaps of ashes, and smouldering blackened timbers, only marked the places, where rich warehouses stood. The crowds of men were still there, but climbing over ruins, instead of counting up their gains, and among them, once more penniless, was the boy whose strange history we are describing.

He discovered in the first moment of safety, that he had left his gold in the burning house, but saw at the same instant how useless trying to reach it would be. It seemed nothing to him then, in the thankfulness for his own escape, and the wild excitement of the fire. It scarcely crossed his mind, as he worked among men who were losing hundreds of thousands, plunging in the thickest smoke, and venturing on the edge of frightful explosions, with almost reckless courage; wild with the excitement of the scene. But that was all over now—only the certainty of loss remained to the merchants, whose warehouses were in ashes, and the boy, whose few hundreds had been his all.

He slept on the ground again that night with only the sky above him, and woke with the old heart-sickness and despondency; as far from home as ever, though the waves of the Pacific broke on the beach before him.

So many had been thrown out of business and employment the day before, that he felt it would be useless to seek for work where no one knew him. He might earn enough to carry him up to the mines, perhaps, but he could not bear the thought of going back to the men and the employment he had quitted. It was like returning to hopeless slavery; “he would die first”—he thought, as he made his way among the piles of goods, and falling timber, where men were already at work, clearing away the ruins and preparing to build again, that business might not be swept out of their hands. Many of these men had lost every thing in the fire of December, and now what they had made since then, but were ready to go on, and trust once more the treacherous element. They showed a perseverance equal to their industry, and he had borne up bravely before. Business was going on the same, when the fire had ceased, as if nothing had interrupted it. He met people hurrying along to and from the post-office, with letters and papers from the States. It was long since he heard a word from home, and he had no reason to think a letter would be directed to him there; he did not expect any thing as he followed after them, and inquired among the rest. There was a few minutes’ delay, and he fell back among the little crowd, as if he already had heard “nothing for you.” No one would have known him as the light-hearted, cheerful, Yankee boy, who had battled bravely through so much. He had grown both taller and thinner the past winter. His clothes were blackened and scorched by the fire, his hands blistered, and there was a deep cut or bruise on his forehead. With bodily pain to bear, and faint from want of food, he scarcely cared what became of him. For the first time he doubted God’s help and goodness, and felt as if he was given up to evil fortune.

The general mail from the States had been distributed several days before, and letters from business correspondents in the interior, were not so eagerly looked for. The space in front of the window at which Sam applied was nearly empty, when his name was called, and to his great astonishment a letter was held out to him. But postage in those days was no trifle. “Forty cents,” the clerk said, and Sam had not forty farthings. He saw that it was, indeed, for him, and in his mother’s handwriting.

“Forty cents,” the clerk repeated mechanically, thinking he had not understood.

“Oh, dear, what shall I do!” burst out involuntarily,—that precious letter lying within his reach, yet it might as well have been in the New-York post-office, for want of a single half dollar.

“Do about what? Why don’t you take your letter and be off; and give somebody else a chance?”

The words were rough, but the voice was cheerful and kindly. Sam turned with a piteously anxious look; his voice trembled, and his hands shook as he pointed to the letter.