The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-09-01
WITH A LITTLE OLD WOMAN ON THE. SANDS,
BY w. Q. MORROW.

We started out for a holiday all to our
dear friends and had not seen each other
for many day. A grievous i'll fortune
had sent US many miles apart, but we had
met again for one long, precious day,
which we should fool and play away to
suit ourselves and nobody else in the
world. That was only few weeks ago,
and my little old friend has gone again,
leaving so strange memory of that day
in the hills and on the sands that I could
wish it less sweet were the voice of loneli-
ness which beguiles it less persistent in its
whisperings.
Had she not been so small, so timid, so
fragile, SO dainty and contiding and affec-
tionate and gentle and quaint, and perhaps
had not the dimples in her cheeks been so
bewitching, and possibly had not her quiet
laughter been SO full Of that merriment
which expresses love of fun made COM
plete by perfect happiness. and undoubt-
edly had not the fine feminine graces with
which her soul was filled possessed so
great a power to twist big man around
her finger the day would not have been
so bright, nor the hours so fleet, nor the
| memory of it all so tinged with loneli-
ness.
| She was an old little woman; that is to
say, she was IL. and it seemed to her that
when q woman arrives at that age she has
passed the uttermost bounds of antiquity
and is Fastening into decrepitude. But
however aged she deemed her frame her
| soul was young. The time will come soon
enough when that shall have
| But this is not lecture on mummies
and souls. 1t is merely to tell how two
children, one an old woman of IL and the
other young man of-anywhere between
80 and iOO-went out for lark in the hills
and on the sands of San Francisco, and
PLAYED and fooled away shining day.
do not care what it may be that impels
the male of the human species to tease
with the greatest pleasure those of the OPP
posite sex of whom he IS fondest, and who
are least able to resist the persecution. But
the fact exists, and was known long before
| dulged this simian instinct that day to
| the meanest of lengths. Standing beside
one of the big guns on the hill back of
Fort Winfield Scott
| "Bess," said I, there is fine treat for
you. You would fit snugly in the bore of
this gun. If l should put some powder in
first, and then push you in feet foremost
and then fire the gun, what wonderful
sail through the air you would have !!
Away out to sea you would go, outlying
the birds, splitting the wind like rocket
and settling down gently on the deck of
| that ship which is heading for the Gate. ]"
Then I caught her up to load the gun
| with her, ana of course she screamed and
resisted in desperate earnestness, and then
giggled merrily when | had set her down.
The beginning of a certain sort of tragedy
which shadows the memory of that day
was the prompting OF my evil genius to
make a sandman on the beach of the Pre-
sidio.
By the exercise of such cunning as an evil
instinct can conjure into activity, | had
maliciously fixed my little old friends at
tention upon arranging in the damp sand
some fantastic mosaic which / had de-
signed for her beguiling and which she was
industriously constructing with some shin
ing pebbles which we had garnered ON the
sands Thus occupied, she did not observe
me constructing the sandman behind her
back; but when had finished the work
with an art in which / take considerable
pride) I drew her attention first to the
channel intending to bring her notice thus
OBVIOUSLY to my wretched creation lying
stark on the beach.
l showed her where the CITY of Chester
had been rammed and sunk in the dark
and told her of the struggles of the people
in the water; where the City of New York
had gone uponvthe rocks and lay miserably
drowning for days, with her nose pushed
upward through the pillows; where Bios
som Rock had been blown up with thun-
dering commotion that strewed the tide
with dead fish; where the fishermen draw
their nets, Bleaching five tons of small fry
at haul and sending them to be canned
| back of Harbor View and graced with the
pretty labels which ordinarily Bordeaux
Gamers atix to the boxes containing the
sardine catches of Concarneau; where the
/ Roo nv a nf
| Tamalpais (the designation being a matter
of sentiment rather than of vision)
| stretches her ugly length along the western
| ridge of the mountain, living on fog and
| the idle chatter of Sausalito; where the
gentle antelope came down the slopes of
the Marin hills sixtytwo years ago to gaze
in wonder at the ship that bore the author
of 1.-TWO Years Before the MAST through
the Golden Gate; where l had once seen a
/ beautiful sight-the weird simmer of the
soft blaze in the lighthouse of AlcatraZ
| steal over the dancing waves OF the chan
mel toward Fort Mason, contrasting it's
| gentle amber light on the water with the
glowing orange of the western sky, and
suddenly and unaccountably disappearing
from the water when the booming of the
sunset gun announced the close of day;
where
But at that moment the sandman,
| lying stark on the beach. sprang forth liv-
| ing and formidable to the observation of
| my little old friend; for my easterly reach
of arm toward Alcatraz had brought the
| sandman into the corner of her eye and
my eloquence was drowned in her cry of
| CONSERVATION. 1 was conscious of two
1.-THE arms clutching my body, and a
dimpled little face buried in my waistcoat
| and stifed supplication:
"Oh, dearest, take me away! Take me
away! Something has been washed up on
| the beach,"
One side of my face was aching to laugh,
and the other was suppressing sob. If had
had two hearts one would have expanded
and the other cracked. But the sand Imam
lay stark and rigid. the empty sockets of
his sand-skull staring idly at the sky, and
his wide, toothless mouth gasping for a
breath of the soft wind which had come
all the way from Nippon for that sorry
spectacle. And his legs, SO straight and
rigid, ended in upturned toes that, could
they have moved, might have wriggled an
insult to the Sleeping Beauty of Tamal-
pals; and his sand-arms, bearing in the
hand of one of them vagrant wisp of
straw for floral offering to the dead
pressed close upon his chest, lest the heart
within should burst.
1t is sweet for big man to have wee
mite of a little old woman cling III terror
to him like that, and the evil in him con-
soles him with the reflection that the end