On the eastern front of the plaza, the pride of San Francisco towers up: the El Dorado. Here every glory of the Adelphi, Arcade, and Bella Union is eclipsed. The unrivalled splendor of rooms, rich decorations, and unexcelled beauty of pictures excite all. The rare liveliness of the attendant wantons marks them as the fairest daughters of Beelzebub. The world waves have stranded these children of Venus on the Pacific shores. Music, recalling the genius of the inspired masters, sways the varying emotions of the multitude. The miners' evenings are given up to roaming from one resort to another. Here, a certain varnish of necessary politeness restrains the throng of men; they are all armed and in the flush of physical power; they dash their thousands against impregnable and exciting gambling combinations at the tables. With no feeling of self-abasement, leading officials, merchants, bankers, judges, officers, and professional men crowd the royal El Dorado. Here they relax the labors of the day with every distraction known to human dissipation.
Staggering out broken-hearted, in the dark midnight, dozens of ruined gamesters have wandered from these fatal doors into the plaza. The nearest alley gives a shelter; a pistol ball crashes into the half-crazed brain.
Suicide!—the gambler's end! Already the Potter's Field claims many of these victims. The successful murderers and thugs linger in the dark shadows of Dupont Street. They crowd Murderer's Alley, Dunbar's Alley, and Kearney Street.
When the purse is emptied, so that the calculating women dealers scorn to notice the last few coins, they point significantly to the outer darkness. "Vamos," is the word. A few rods will bring the plucked fool to the "Blue Wing," the "Magnolia," or any one of a hundred drinking dens. Here the bottle chases away all memories of the night's play.
In utter defiance of the decent community, these temples of pleasure, with their quick-witted knaves, and garrisons of bright-eyed bacchanals, ignore the useful day; at night, they shine out, splendid lighthouses on the path to the dark entrance of hell. By mutual avoidance, the good and bad, the bright and dark side of human effort rule in alternation the day and night. Sin rests in the daytime.
In the barracks, where the serried battalions of crime loll away the garish day, silence discreetly rules. Sleep and rest mark the sunlit hours. The late afternoon parade is an excitant.
All over San Francisco, in its queerly assorted tenancy, church and saloon, school and opium den, thieves' resort and budding home, are placed side by side. Vigorous elbowing of the criminal and base classes finally forces all that is decent into a semi-banishment. Decency is driven to the distant hills, crowned with their scrubby oaks. Vice needs the city centre. It always does.
Philip Hardin is cynical and without family ties. Able by nature, skilled in books, and a master of human strategy he needs some broader field for the sweep of his splendid talents than the narrowed forum of the local courts. Ambition offers no immediate prize to struggle for. The busy present calls on him for daily professional effort. Political events point to an exciting struggle between North and South in the future; but the hour of fate is not yet on the dial.
In the Southerner's dislike of the contact of others, looking to his place as a social leader of the political element, Philip Hardin lives alone; his temporary cottage is planted in a large lot removed from the immediate danger of fires. His quick wit tells him they will some day sweep the crowded houses in the eastern part of the city, as far as the bay. The larger native oaks still afford a genial shade. Their shadows give the tired lawyer a few square rods of breathing space. Books and all the implements of the scholar are his; the interior is crowded with those luxuries which Hardin enjoys as of right. Deeply drinking the cup of life, even in his social vices, Philip Hardin aims at a certain distinction.
Around his table gather the choicest knights-errant of the golden quest. Maxime Valois here develops a social talent as a leader of men, guided by the sardonic Mephisto of his young life.