When the subject of an approaching wedding was broached to Wharton Kendrick, I had an indistinct impression that he thought his niece could have done better. But as the date drew near, I had no fault to find with his growing enthusiasm, and indeed had to enter into conspiracy with Laura to curb his extravagance. He gave away the bride with exemplary dignity, made a speech that set the wedding-table in a roar, and as we drove away, sent a farewell shoe after me with such unerring aim that I spent the first part of the honeymoon in an odor of arnica and opodeldoc. And even now a whiff of liniment carries me back in fancy to that happy time.
Mercy Fillmore made a most charming bridesmaid at our wedding, and General Wilson was so loud in her praise, and so frank in telling what he would do if he were thirty years younger, that she went through the evening with an unwonted color in her face. But a few months later she was married--at our house, and with many misgivings on our part--to Parks. But we were happily disappointed in our fears. Whether from the calming influence of Mercy, or the black eye bestowed upon him by an ungrateful constituency, Parks ceased to be a militant reformer, and turned his energies to the prosaic but more remunerative business of selling groceries. He cut his hair, and though on occasion he delivers addresses before numberless clubs, in which he declares that the remedy for the evils of society is to be found in socialism, he is careful to insist that this panacea is to be applied in the distant future, and is not adapted to present conditions.
It is a good many years since I married my wife, and it is my candid opinion that she is prettier than ever. I can join the children in testifying that her talent for managing a family is unsurpassed. Perhaps there is a little more of it than is absolutely necessary, but it is some time since I ceased to offer that suggestion. As for me--well, I've grown stouter than in the hurrying days of old; but Mrs. Hampden affects to believe that a portly form is highly becoming in a man, and I shouldn't think of being the one to contradict her.
POSTSCRIPT
The author offers his apologies to the Muse of History for a few liberties that have been taken with chronology in the tale. Kearney's rise to prominence followed instead of preceding the riots of 1877. Otherwise, the history of the time, where touched on, has been faithfully followed, and, I hope, the spirit of the self-reliant men who organized a city for its own defense has given some inspiration to these pages.
The city of which the tale is told is gone. Such buildings of the era as had survived the march of time and progress were swept away by the mightiest conflagration of history, and all that is left of the old San Francisco is a memory. That the new city that springs from its ashes may prove as picturesque as the old, and be animated by the same spirit, is the hope of the author of these pages.
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