Starr King's popularity had given the Unitarian church and Sunday-school a great hold on the community. At Christmas its festivals were held in Platt's Hall. We paid a hundred dollars for rent and twenty-five dollars for a Christmas-tree. Persons who served as doorkeepers or in any other capacity received ten dollars each. At one dollar for admission we crowded the big hall and always had money left over. Our entertainments were elaborate, closing with a dance. My first service for the Sunday-school was the unobserved holding up an angel's wing in a tableau. One of the most charming of effects was an artificial snowstorm, arranged for the concluding dance at a Christmas festival. The ceiling of the hall was composed of horizontal windows giving perfect ventilation and incidentally making it feasible for a large force of boys to scatter quantities of cut-up white paper evenly and plentifully over the dancers, the evergreen garlands decorating the hall, and the polished floor. It was a long-continued downpour, a complete surprise, and for many a year a happy tradition.
In Platt's Hall wonderfully fine orchestral concerts were held, under the very capable direction of Rudolph Herold. Early in the sixties Caroline Richings had a successful season of English opera. Later the Howsons charmed us for a time. All the noteworthy lecturers of the world who visited California received us at Platt's Hall. Beecher made a great impression. Carl Schurz, also, stirred us deeply. I recall one clever sentence. He said, "When the time came that this country needed a poultice it elected President Hayes and got it." Of our local talent real eloquence found its best expression in Henry Edgerton. The height of enthusiasm was registered in war-time by the mighty throng that gathered at Lincoln's call for a hundred thousand men. Starr King was the principal speaker. He had called upon his protégé, Bret Harte, for a poem for the occasion. Harte doubted his ability, but he handed Mr. King the result of his effort. He called it the "Reveille." King was greatly delighted. Harte hid himself in the concourse. King's wonderful voice, thrilling with emotion, carried the call to every heart and the audience with one accord stood and cheered again and again.
One of the most striking coincidences I ever knew occurred in connection with the comparatively mild earthquake of 1866. It visited us on a Sunday at the last moments of the morning sermon. Those in attendance at the Unitarian church were engaged in singing the last hymn, standing with books in hand. The movement was not violent but threatening. It flashed through my mind that the strain on a building with a large unsupported roof must be great. Faces blanched, but all stood quietly waiting the end, and all would have gone well had not the large central pipe of the organ, apparently unattached, only its weight holding it in place, tottered on its base and leaped over the heads of the choir, falling into the aisle in front of the first pews. The effect was electric. The large congregation waited for no benediction or other form of dismissal. The church was emptied in an incredibly short time, and the congregation was very soon in the middle of the street, hymnbooks in hand. The coincidence was that the verse being sung was,
"The seas shall melt,
And skies to smoke decay,
Rocks turn to dust,
And mountains fall away."
We had evening services at the time, and Dr. Stebbins again gave out the same hymn, and this time we sang it through.
The story of Golden Gate Park and how the city got it is very interesting, but must be much abridged. In 1866 I pieced out a modest income by reporting the proceedings of the Board of Supervisors and the School Board for the Call. It was in the palmy days of the People's Party. The supervisors, elected from the wards in which they lived, were honest and fairly able. The man of most brains and initiative was Frank McCoppin. The most important question before them was the disposition of the outside lands. In 1853 the city had sued for the four square leagues (seventeen thousand acres) allowed under the Mexican law. It was granted ten thousand acres, which left all land west of Divisadero Street unsettled as to title. Appeal was taken, and finally the city's claim was confirmed. In 1866 Congress passed an act confirming the decree, and the legislature authorized the conveyance of the lands to occupants.
They were mostly squatters, and the prize was a rich one. Congress had decreed "that all of this land not needed for public purposes, or not previously disposed of, should be conveyed to the persons in possession," so that all the latitude allowed was as to what "needs for public purposes" covered. There had been agitation for a park; indeed, Frederick Law Olmstead had made an elaborate but discouraging report, ignoring the availability of the drifting sand-hills that formed so large a part of the outside lands, recommending a park including our little Duboce Park and one at Black Point, the two to be connected by a widened and parked Van Ness Avenue, sunken and crossed by ornamental bridges.
The undistributed outside lands to be disposed of comprised eighty-four hundred acres. The supervisors determined to reserve one thousand acres for a park. Some wanted to improve the opportunity to secure without cost considerably more. The Bulletin advocated an extension that would bring a bell-shaped panhandle down to the Yerba Buena Cemetery, property owned by the city and now embraced in the Civic Center. After long consideration a compromise was made by which the claimants paid to those whose lands were kept for public use ten per cent of the value of the lands distributed. By this means 1,347.46 acres were rescued, of which Golden Gate Park included 1,049.31, the rest being used for a cemetery, Buena Vista Park, public squares, school lots, etc. The ordinances accomplishing the qualified boon to the city were fathered by McCoppin and Clement. Other members of the committee, immortalized by the streets named after them, were Clayton, Ashbury, Cole, Shrader, and Stanyan.
The story of the development of Golden Gate Park is well known. The beauty and charm are more eloquent than words, and John McLaren, ranks high among the city's benefactors.
The years from 1860 to 1870 marked many changes in the character and appearance of San Francisco. Indeed, its real growth and development date from the end of the first decade. Before that we were clearing off the lot and assembling the material. The foundation of the structure that we are still building was laid in the second decade. Statistics establish the fact. In population we increased from less than 57,000 to 150,000—163 per cent. In the first decade our assessed property increased $9,000,000; in the second, $85,000,000. Our imports and exports increased from $3,000,000 to $13,000,000. Great gain came through the silver production, but greater far from the development of the permanent industries of the land—grain, fruit, lumber—and the shipping that followed it.