Sitting down opposite John Gault, where the light of the long window fell full upon his face, he had all the assurance of manner of a man whose bonanza has not become a memory and a dream.
“I was going by, and I thought I’d drop in and pass the time of day,” he said. “Things aren’t as lively with me just now as they have been. It’s an off season.”
“It’s that with most of us,” said the other, regarding him intently and wondering what he had come for.
“All in the same coffin, are we?” said the colonel, airily. “I’m generally on the full jump down here of a morning; but lately—”
He shrugged his shoulders and flung out his hands with a gesture of hopeless acquiescence in unmerited bad luck.
“You’re fortunate,” said Gault, “to have something to be on the full jump about. We find things pretty slow.”
“Oh, of course, in comparison with the past,” assented the old man. “Slow? Slow is not the word. Dead, my dear friend! San Francisco is a dead city—dead as Pompeii.”
“Well, not quite as bad as that,” said Gault, laughing in spite of himself.
“How should you be able to judge?” retorted the colonel. “You weren’t thought of when we old fellows were laying out the town. There was more life here in a minute then than there is now in a week. Then Portsmouth Square was the plaza and the center of the city, with a line of French boot-blacks along the lower side. We used to try our French on ’em every time we got a shine. And Lord! what smart fellows they were, and how much money they made!”