One of the heroes of the occasion was Louis Mesmer, a friend of Lehman, whose desire it was to take a talking part in the proceedings, force up the prices and so help the latter. Amidst the familiar, "Going, going, going!" accordingly, the bidding began and, under the incentive of Mesmer's bullish activities, the figures soon reached four hundred dollars, the last bidder being Eugene Meyer, local agent for the mortgagee. At this juncture Mesmer, in his enthusiasm, doubled the bid to eight hundred dollars, expecting, of course, to induce someone to raise the price, already high for that day, still higher.
But "the best-laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft a-gley." How eagerly Mesmer awaited the fruition of his shrewd manipulation! how he listened in hopeful anticipation to the repeated, "Going, going, going!" of the auctioneer! In vain, however, he waited, in vain he listened. To his mortification and embarrassment, his astounded ear was greeted with the decisive, "Gone!—for eight hundred dollars! Sold to Louis Mesmer!"
Mesmer had bought, for more than it was worth, a piece of property which he did not want, a catastrophe realized as well by all the others present as it was patent to the victim himself. The crowd relished keenly the ludicrous situation in which Mesmer found himself, encumbered as he was with an investment which he had had no intention of making; and throughout the remainder of the contest he was distinguished only by his silence.
Poor old George! His vision was accurate: Los Angeles was to become great, but her splendid expansion was delayed too long for him to realize his dreams. When Lehman died, he was buried in a pauper's grave; and toward the end of the eighties, the adobe Round House, once such a feature of George Lehman's Garden of Paradise, was razed to make way for needed improvements.
I have spoken of the intolerable condition of the atmosphere in the Council Chamber when Charles Crocker made his memorable visit to Los Angeles to consult with the City Fathers. In the eighties, when the Common Council met in the southeast corner of the second floor of Temple Block, the same objectionable use of tobacco prevailed, with the result that the worthy Aldermen could scarcely be distinguished twenty-five feet away from the rough benches on which sat the equally beclouded spectators.
Doubtless the atmosphere of the court room was just as foul when the Mayor, as late at least as 1880, passed judgment each morning, sitting as a Justice, on the crop of disorderlies of the preceding night. Then not infrequently some neighbor or associate of the Mayor himself, caught in the police dragnet, appeared among the drowsy defendants!
CHAPTER XXXVI
CENTENARY OF THE CITY—ELECTRIC LIGHT
1881-1884
The year 1881 opened with what, for Los Angeles, was a curious natural phenomenon—snow falling in February and covering the streets and plains with a white mantle. So rare was the novelty that many residents then saw the oddly-shaped flakes for the first time. It was about that time, according to my recollection, that another attempt was made to advertise Los Angeles through her far-famed climate, an effort which had a very amusing termination. Prominent men of our city invited the California Editorial Association, of which Frank Pixley of the Argonaut was President, to meet in Los Angeles that year, with the far-sighted intention of having them give wider publicity to the charms and fame of our winters. During this convention, a banquet was held in the dining-room of the St. Elmo Hotel, then perhaps called the Cosmopolitan. After a fine repast and a flow of brilliant eloquence, principally devoted to extolling our climatic wonders, the participants dispersed. But what was the surprised embarrassment of the Los Angeles boomers, on making their exit, to find pieces of ice hanging from all points of vantage and an intense cold permeating and stiffening their bones. Thus ended, amid the few icicles Los Angeles has ever known, the first official attempt to extend the celebrity of our glorious and seductive climate.
In February, Nathaniel C. Carter, to whom I have referred as a pioneer in arranging railroad excursions for tourists coming to California, bought from E. J. Baldwin some eleven hundred acres of the Santa Anita Ranch, comprising the northern and wilder portion which sloped down from the base of the Sierra Madre Mountains. This he subdivided, piping water from the hills; and by wide advertising he established Sierra Madre, appropriating the name already selected by a neighboring colony.
In 1881, J. M. Guinn, who for a decade or more had been Principal of the schools at Anaheim, was made Superintendent of Los Angeles City Schools.