The ferry approach in 'Frisco was choked with a rabble. Upon landing Coonskin and I rode our little long-eared animals up Market street to a prominent hotel, a cheering throng of men and street gamins tagging behind or following by the walk on both sides of the street. And when at two o'clock the glass doors to its great white court were thrown open to us, I was just twenty-two hours ahead of schedule time.
The several rows of balconies were crowded with hotel guests and friends waving handkerchiefs and hats, and cheer upon cheer rose to the crystal roof and descended to our ears. The court was packed. I called a porter.
"Bring a rug for my silver-shod donkey to stand on," I ordered. The darkey looked mystified, and had the insolence to question my strange request, but he soon brought the rug. The reporters aided me to urge back the crowd to give the spectators in the balconies a view of Mac's silver-shod hoofs, all four of which Coonskin lifted, one after the other, for them to see.
"Three cheers for Mac A'Rony!" some one shouted from the balcony. It was the signal for a general outburst of applause; and Mac, Coxey and Don, each, respectively, brayed or bayed his deafening acknowledgment of the popular ovation.
Then I briefly reviewed my long and tempestuous voyage of 4,096 miles on a donkey's hurricane deck in 340 days and two hours. Frequently I was interrupted with laughter or cheers, as I cited some ludicrous experience, and the unbridled throng, many of them mere street loungers, laughed and yelled and whistled until, finally, the incensed manager was attracted to the Court. The police were unable to cope with the crowd, so I was requested to remove the cause of the disturbance. Indeed I was grateful for the excuse to get away from that wild scene. Coonskin took the animals to the stable, and I, after registering, immediately sought a more exclusive hotel, to whose landlord I bore a letter of introduction from a distinguished gentleman friend.
I must have looked as if I had crossed Central Africa and had fought fifty tribes of cannibals. My clothes, hat and leggings were in shreds, my sleeves were fastened to my coat with bale-wire, and blue cotton hung in view.
"Do you take tramps at this hotel?" I inquired of the astonished clerk of the Occidental, as I leaned on the office counter. He stopped sorting letters and eyed me with curiosity, but before he recovered his reason, the junior proprietor appeared, and said: "Sometimes," then with a knowing smile extended his hand in greeting.
"I believe this is Mr. Pod," he said. I nodded and handed him the letter. When he had read it the affable young gentleman extended me the freedom of the hotel and three days later got up a coaching party in my honor.
I was soon a transformed man. After a shave and hair-cut and bath, I dressed and appeared at the office attired as a gentleman on parade, and was hardly recognized by the clerk to be the same man.
Coonskin, too, I had fitted out completely; besides I gave him a sum of money and an honorable discharge. In a few days he secured a situation in a hotel, but later set out for a mining camp in the Sierras to dig for gold.