I have seen a poor saloon called the "Auction Lunch," on Washington Street, near the Post-office, said to have been kept by the once barkeepers, Flood and O'Brien, who attained such a splendid prosperity. There is no historic tablet over the door, but one naturally looks with reverence at the place where the beginning of such things could be. The proprietors of the " Auction Lunch " were in the habit of taking gold-dust occasionally in a friendly way from miners, for safe-keeping while the owners were enjoying themselves about town. It was from such persons that they obtained the "points" which resulted in their getting possession first of "Hale and Norcross," and then of the greater part of the properties of the Comstock lode.
I fell in with a professed friend of theirs of early times, whose fortunes had not mended at all at the same pace. He descanted on the inequalities of fate, and what he termed " bull-dog " luck.
He could prove that Flood and O'Brien were not even good business men "though Jimmy Flood does go about with a wise air," he said, "and Billy O'Brien left, at his death, half a million dollars to each of eight or ten nieces."
There is hardly a limit to the exceptional characters and exceptional doings to be heard of in San Francisco. Though the city affect -or has been driven into- a quiescent air now, it has hardly ever done anything like any other place. It began with the wild Argonauts of '49, whom Bret Harte has so strikingly portrayed. It had had six great fires, which destroyed property to the amount of $23,000,000, when yet less than three years of age. It was ruled for months, in the year 1856, by a vigilance committee, which rid it of eight hundred evil-doers of one sort and another, the worst by summary execution, the rest by banishment.
