wheezing
rattle lifted it up, planted the point in the proper place, bringing the large end under range of the iron block or hammer, which was lifted up and dropped upon it in successive blows.
The sorriest of all sink-holes was the old city hall. Originally the Jenny Lind theatre, which proved to be a bad speculation, it was by potent, grave, and reverend city fathers, for a proper consideration of their pockets by the seller, converted into a municipal building. The price paid was $200,000, to which must be added $40,000 for alterations. It was a place that few re- spectable persons would care to enter except as driven there by necessity. It was connected with everything unhappy, unholy. The basement was a vault filled with drunkards, vagabonds, thieves, with the usual attendants on the fraternity. On the first floor were the municipal offices, the mayor's court-room being the most sickening place of all. Up one fliglit were the rooms of the city council, the city treasurer's office, and the district court chambers. In the third floor were more offices. Subsequently were added to the main edifice the old gambling shops on either side, of one of which was made the hall of records, and of the other, offices.
A. motley crowd was ever thronging the streets; the tatooed islander, the solemn Chinaman, and the slovenly Chilian mingled with the more decided wliite and black from Europe and Africa. A mighty tahs- man had transformed a wilderness into a place of busy industry, a barren peninsula into a blooming city ; and the same subtle influence was still at work, blending: national antipathies with kindly spmpathies, and har- monizing the antagonistic elements of this strange brotherhood. Blessed be gold when it can be broucvht to such uses?
Thus rapidly was an orderly, intelligent population replacing the hurrying gold -seekers. Those who now purposed to make CaUfornia their home, were resolved that the scum from eastern and European cities, and
