One incident of this period of excitement and strain is perhaps worthy of record as evidence of the good fellowship existing between Los Angeles and the prostrate city. On May 2d the Executive Committee[45] of the Associated Jobbers passed resolutions discouraging any effort to take advantage of San Francisco's plight, and pledging to help restore her splendid commercial prestige; whereupon Samuel T. Clover made this editorial comment in the Los Angeles Evening News:
We commend the reading of these expressions of kindly good will to every pessimist in the country, as an evidence that all commercial honor is not wiped out in this grossly materialistic age. The resolutions, as passed, are an honor to the Jobbers' Association in particular, and a credit to Los Angeles in general. The Evening News desires to felicitate President Newmark and his associates on the lofty attitude they have taken in the exigency. We are proud of them.
Among the many who at this time turned their faces toward Los Angeles is Hector Alliot, the versatile Curator of the Southwest Museum. Born in France and graduating from the University of Lombardy, Dr. Alliot participated in various important explorations, later settling in San Francisco. Losing in the earthquake and fire everything that he possessed, Alliot came south and took up the quill, first with the Examiner and then the Times.[46]
Mr. and Mrs. M. Kremer, on April 9th, celebrated their golden wedding; less than a year later, both were dead. Mrs. Kremer passed away on March 5th, 1907, and her husband followed her two days later—an unusual dispensation.
In July, I was seized with an illness which, without doubt, must have precluded the possibility of writing these memoirs had it not been for the unselfish attendance, amounting to real self-sacrifice, of Lionel J. Adams. From that time until now, in fair weather or foul, in good health or ill, Adams uncomplainingly and, indeed cheerfully, has bestowed upon me the tender care that contributed to the prolongation of my life; and it affords me peculiar pleasure to record, not only the debt of gratitude that I owe him and the sincere friendship so long marking our relations, but also his superior character as a man.
J. M. Griffith, for years a leading transportation agent and lumber merchant, died here on October 16th. Griffith Avenue is named after him. Just two weeks later, William H. Perry passed away—a man of both influence and affluence, but once so poor and tattered that when he arrived, in February, 1854, he was unable to seek work until he had first obtained, on credit, some decent clothes.
Sometime about 1907, Major Ben C. Truman, both a connoisseur of good wines and an epicure, figured in an animated controversy as to the making of mint-julep, the battle waging around the question whether a julep's a julep, or not a julep, with the mint added before or after a certain stage in the concocting!
Harris and Sarah Newmark, at Time of Golden Wedding