Shabby dance-halls, ephemeral Thespian efforts, cheap dens of the most brutal vice, and dark lairs abound, where sailors, laborers, and crowding criminals lurk, ready for their human prey. Their female accomplices are only the sirens watching these great strongholds of brazen vice. A greater luxury only gilds a lower form of human abasement. The motley horde, wallowing on the "Barbary Coast" and in the mongrel thieves' haunts of "Pacific Street," the entrenched human devils on "Telegraph Hill" are but natural prey of the coarsest vices.
The ready revolver, Colt's devilish invention, has deluged the West and South with blood. Murder's prime minister hangs in every man's belt. Colonel James Bowie's awful knife is a twin of this monstrous birth. In long years of dark national shame our country will curse the memory of the "two Colonels." They were typical of their different sectional ideas. These men gave us the present coat of arms of San Francisco: the Colt's revolver and the Bowie knife.
Yes, thousands of yet untenanted graves yawn for the future victims of these mechanical devices. The skill of the Northern inventor, and the devilish perfection of the heart-cleaving blade of the Southern duellist are a shame to this wild age.
The plaza with impartial liberality yields up its frontages to saloon, palace of play, and hotels for the fair ministers of His Satanic Majesty. It is the pride of the enterprising "sports" and "sharpers," who represent the baccalaureate degree of every known vice. On the west, the "Adelphi" towers, with its grand gambling saloon, its splendid "salle a manger," and cosey nooks presided over by attractive Frenchwomen. Long tables, under crystal chandeliers, offer a choice of roads to ruin. Monte, faro, rouge et noir, roulette, rondo and every gambling device are here, to lure the unwary. Dark-eyed subtle attendants lurk, ready to "preserve order," in gambling parlance. At night, blazing with lights, the superb erotic pictures on the walls look down on a mad crowd of desperate gamesters. Paris has sent its most suggestive pictures here, to inflame the wildest of human passions. Nymph and satyr gleam from glittering walls; Venus approves with melting glances, from costliest frames, the self-immolation of these dupes of fortune. Every wanton grace of the artist throws a luxurious refinement of the ideal over the palace of sin and shame.
Long counters, with splendid mirrors, display richest plate. They groan with costliest glass, and every dark beverage from hell's hottest brew. Card tables, and quiet recesses, richly curtained, invite to self-surrender and seclusion. The softest music breathes from a full orchestra. Gold is everywhere, in slugs, doubloons, and heaps of nuggets. Gold reigns here. Silver is a meaner metal hardly attainable. Bank notes are a flimsy possibility of the future. Piles of yellow sovereigns and the coinage of every land load the tables. Sallow, glittering-eyed croupiers sweep in, with affected nonchalance, this easy-gained harvest of chance or fraud.
As the evening wears on, these halls fill up with young and old. The bright face of youth is seen, inflamed with every burning passion, let loose in the wild uncontrolled West. It is side by side with the haggard visage of the veteran gamester. Every race has its representatives. The possession of gold is the cachet of good-fellowship. Anxious crowds criticise rapid and dashing play. The rattle of dice, calls of the dealers, shouts of the attendants ring out. The sharp, hard, ringing voices of the fallen goddesses of the tables rise on the stifling air, reeking of smoke and wine. Dressed with the spoils of the East, bare of bosom, bright of eye, hard of heart, glittering in flashing gems, and nerved with drink, are these women. The painted sirens of the Adelphi smile, with curled carmine lips which give the lie to the bold glances of the wary eyes of those she-devils.
With a hideous past thrown far behind them, they fear no future. Desperate as to the present, ministering to sin, inciting to violence, conspiring to destroy body and soul, these beautiful annihilators of all decency vie in deviltry only with each other.
They flaunt, by day, toilettes like duchesses' over the muddy streets; their midnight revels outlast the stars sweeping to the pure bosom of the Pacific. The nightly net is drawn till no casting brings new gudgeons. An unparalleled display of wildest license and maddest abandonment marks day and night.
Across the square the Bella Union boasts similar glories, equal grandeur, and its own local divinities of the Lampsacene goddess.
It is but a stone's throw to the great Arcade. From Clay to Commercial Street, one grand room offers every allurement to hundreds, without any sign of overcrowding. The devil is not in narrow quarters.