The Birmingham age-herald., 1905-10-08
From the Washington Post.

From the Washington fost'
 /<~ ONE of these days, when I settle
 down on that farm that I've
 o hankering for-its only mir age of farm yet-Tm going to sit down and write little story called Towns I've Been Broke In,," observed a now sedate man who has done lot of drifting around. i've been broke all the way from here to Shanghai and back-not for very long beriods at stretch, it is true, but ,fiatly and unqualifiedly broke.
 q believe 1 could set down fairly ac- curate tabulation of the hardest towns on the globe for fellow to go broke in. San Francisco is the worst of them all.
 "Id rather be beachcomber in Samoa or a sunflower in Australia than to be broke again in San Francisco. For real cragginess and hopelessness and norway outness, just you try going broke in San Francisco once and see how near you il get to Jumping off the dock.
 "The reason why San Francisco's such a rum one when it comes to going broke there Is that it's so hard to break away from the place. You see, that cluster or mountains between San Francisco and the Mississippi river is there to stay.
 You can't walk over 'en, either. It's case of ride when you want to leave san Francisco, and it's d case, likewise, of paying for your ride.
 If you don't happen to have the 4ittle pasteboard when the conductor man drifts around and looks you in the eye off you go, no matter whether it's in nest or cacti or a patch of sagebrush or just q reach of desert PIP miles from nowhere at all. The conductor doesn't let you pick out your own ditching place.
 Conductors who run overland trains out of San Francisco are there with the abysmal brute thing all right, and tesy wouldn't mind it in the least if they had to whiz by your bleaching bones, lying out on the desert alongside the track, 365 times year. They're calloused to all that.
 You can sometimes get away from San Francisco by slowing away on one of the Panama steamers, but then you're dump ed when you get down to the isthmus, and it's a whole lot harder to stow away on one of the up boats on the eastern site of the isthmus. I ought to know-but that isn't part of this.
 There came an evening when I walked the streets hungry enough to eat burro stuffed with Roman candles. It was a raw, chilly ev,>ing, for the glorious cll- mate of California, sir doesn't mean San Francisco, which has th> darkest, clam miest, rawest fogSiest, meanest climate south of Spitzbergen
 'In addition to the mastodonic appetite had a moderately good front-just the one rig, everything else having sailed up the caves. It was in '93 and '9S was an even worse year in California than throughout the rest of the country
 San Francisco has more restaurants in proportion to its size than any other city in America. and good eating's cheaper there than anywhere else in the United States The restaurant sure did look warm and inviting and bright and glowy to me that evening. But I wasn't there with the price of a toothpick and they didn't seem to be for me.
 q walked around aimlessly until I pass edby the Palace hotel. I looked into the brilliant cafe of the Palace and saw easy looking chaps lolling back in their chairs, the glow of the red and orange candle shades in their faces and the petals from the cut flowers falling gently to the table cloths.
 That engaging picture didn't have any soothing effect upon me. It worked Just the other way.
 T think said I to myself, that l shall take dinner this evening insiVe there. I'm hungry. and the Palace Is good enough for me-
 "so I walked into the cafe of the Pal ace.