Suddenly, as though the memory overwhelmed him, Windham's face sank forward in his hands.
"She was very sweet," his voice broke pitifully. "I--loved her."
Several days later Frank and his father paid a visit to the ruined city. One had to get passes in Oakland and wear them on one's hat. Sightseers were not admitted nor carried on ferry boats, trains.
Already Telegraph Hill was dotted with new habitations. It was rumored that Andrea Sbarbora, banker and patron of the Italian Colony, was bringing a carload of lumber from Seattle which he would sell to fire sufferers on credit and at cost. The spirit of rehabilitation was strong.
Frank was immensely cheered by it. But Francisco was overwhelmed by the desolation. "I am going South," he told his son. "I can't bear to see this. I don't even know where I am."
It was true. One felt lost in those acres of ashes and debris. Familiar places seemed beyond memorial reconstruction, so smitten was the mind by this horror of leveled buildings, gutted walls and blackened streets.
Francisco and Jeanne went to San Diego. There the former tried to refashion the work of many months--two hundred pages of a novel which the flames destroyed. Robert Windham and his family journeyed to Hawaii. Frank did not see his uncle after that talk in the Berkeley Hills.
Parks and public spaces were covered with little green cottages in orderly rows. Refugee camps one termed then and therein lived 20,000 of the city's homeless.
Street cars were running. Passengers were carried free until the first of May. Patrick Calhoun was trying to convert the cable roads into electric lines in spite of the objection of the improvement clubs. He was negotiating with the Supervisors for a blanket franchise to electrize all of his routes.