The mountain sentinel. [volume] (Ebensburg, Pa.) 1844-1853, 1850-01-17
Life in San Francisco.
Correspondence Of the N. Y. Erening Post
SAN Francisco, Nov. / 5, IS49.


The people of San Francisco are mad,
stark mad. In Bedlam you may have
seen, perchance, all occasional mailman
there are hundreds such in California
out at elbows, strutting with lordly step,
with head erect, and eyes staring wildly
about, proclaiming himself, in his happy
deluson, the lord and proprietor of untold
wealth. He will tell you, with an air of
happy contertment, as you look sadly up
on the long dismal wards, filled with mad
men, grinning, raging, moaning, the great
thick walls, the barred door, and the grated
window, that he is the fortunate possessor
of all you see, of the whole structure which
appears to his diseased fancy palace, but
which you know, as the keeper turns the
lock and the iron bar upon HIM, is but a
prison-hou Sc for the mad.
A dozen times or more, during the last
few weeks, have been taken by the arm
by some of the miAionaires-so they call
themselves, call them madman-of San
Francisco, looking wondrously dirty and
out at elbows for men of such magnificent
pretensons. They have dragged me about
through the mud and filth almost up to my
middle, from one pine box to another,
CdIlCu IldllSlOIl, HOtcl. Udlh. Of SLOTe. DIS 1t
may please imagination, and have told me
with sincerity that would have done cred
it to bedlamite, these splendid (they had
all the admiration and fine adiectives to
! themselves structures were theirs, and
| that they, the fortunate proprietors, were
worth from TWO TO three hundred thousand
! dollars year each. Such wealth and
! such millionaires have existed before, as
we read in the history of Laws Mississip-
pi scheme, the South Sea bubble, and 9TH
! er bubbles.
! There is a great deal of wild excitement,
! as you might suppose, engendered by the
present state of things in San Francisco;
| there were no less than four suicides this
! last week; There is misery, too, and mis-
cry that is fully realized, for there is no
| Illusion about sickness and staring want.
3here are no less than fifty paupers at this
moment supported by the town of San
Francisco, at an expense of five dollars
each day. There is comedy, too, as
well as tragedy, in San Francisco; some
odd contrasts and drolI Inconsistencies
Purple and fine linen are not the clothing
of the rich here; and Dives has come to the
level of Lazarus.
Society here is in strangely dislocateC
state; all its members ~~are out of place
Dame Fortune has chosen her favoirte:
contrary to the usual laws of prudence
The scrub-horse has gone in for the cu1
and won. The tail is where the heat
ought to be. Poverty is certainly the re
spectacle thing in California There is ;
Delmonico's restaurant in San Francisco
where, in the absence of the French cut
lets and chatau margaux of the original
you may be sure of getting, at all seasons
the rare luxury of being waited upon by
score or more of gentlemen, Just such a
In New ork on a Sunday pass up an,
down the middle aisles with a silver plat
collecting the offerings of the benevolen
-vestry men, deacons, and such like
whose duty it is to collect alms,-you cal
see just such passing up and down anon.
the tables, waiting and tending upon tn,
customers as common walters.
1t is rumored that at the present lin,
there is in San Francisco Judge from
Oregon, now waiter at Delmonico S; a pro
fessor of Yale College driving an OK team
and Methodist parson tending a bar, anC
that the latter, numbers more than on,
temperance lecturer among his regular Gus
toners. The ideas of the child ren-fo
there are few such here-must be strange
ly exalted in regard to money. / saw
group of them the other day about a, frui
and candy stall in the chief square, tn
Youngest of whom, child of some thrc