The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-06-17
SAN FRANCISCO FALLEN
sT RISCO it was called in that af- lection which prompts express
sion in dlmlnutives.

lection which prompts express
 sion in diminutives.
 Shaken to shards in the dawn. gulphed in part by mad sea. swept by flame. Ruin covering agony, crowned by hunger, thirst. fever. pest. Death over all.
 Beautiful. soft Frisco. lucious as a great pear or cluster of grapes. City of romance, splendor. strife. where the strange odors of the east come in to sweeten the winds of the west. Frisco. sleeky fair and, like the Pacific, as treacherous as fair.
 Town of wild. strange, tumulous mem ories to one who never saw it's streets or sensed it's paradisal bay or felt the subtle, passionate stirring of it's more than Ital- ian, curiously blent quattrocento and ultra atmosphere.
 There gathered the seekers of the Gold en Fleece to scatter their shearings, to gamble, to carouse, steal murder and build a mighty town. The village hell and then--the Vigilantes. Judge Lynch twas it's first. law-g -giver-more rigorous than Draco.
 Navvies turned Croesus came in and ibuilded banks, their palaces rising in uncouth ostentation. setting up insane lspeculation. developing rivalries that If1owered into duels and into remorseless combines to drive one man, thinking Himself broken into the sea. Names were heralded from there that meant gold in mountains. Flood, O'Brien, Mackay, IFair, Sharon-and a score more. They g1eagued with or fought one another. They plundered one another and the public. They ded-most of them with a plenteourness of wives equal almost to that of their money
 Business, politics, the law, all life was picturesque and blood color. Then out lof the aureate din and dust came the tconstructives-Stanf Crocker, Hunt Itngton, Sutro, taking mighty chances on Ibuilding railroads across the continent, dazzling the world with their daring, buccaneering the plains, piercing the mountains and grabbing subsidies that made imperial domains look like kitchen gardens. Out of Frisco came the gam bier Keene to teach the lessons of Gould and Fisk and Daniel Drew, to break and fbe broken, to win and fail. and win and fnally hold his own and much more against the most frenzied of frenzied flnanciers of a third of a century later.
 The daughters of rough and tumble bar-keepers and wrangling washer-wom- en married the sons of princes whose lines ran back to the time of Michael Angelo and beyond. The woman of the camp queened it in London, and offered to buy the Arc de Tromphe in Paris because it obstructed her view Of a par ade The grub-stake prospectors built palaces filled with the spoil of Italy on Fifth avenue. Their daughters set the pace for the Four Hundred. The con- itests over their wills by wives they for got to mention clogged the courts. Su- preme justices of the nation were as saulted by the champions of these wives, and the United States marshal slew Sara Althea Hill Terrys attorney hus- band to save a justice who had decided against her.
 There came from the sand lots the cry that 'the Chinese must go.' It stirred the country f1ercely. was forgotten only ito revive again thirty years and more later as a result of the war with Spain Out of golden Frisco came the raucous voice of Denis Kearney, an agitator to live in history with Wat Tyler and Jack .Cade, to inspire the thinking of states men who would not have wiped their feet upon him. Denis Kearneys mad snarling obscene mouthings are trans lated today into profound statesmenllke argument against lHc ieiio" Nih Stormy men and sudden wealth and growing cosmopolitanism with all the col orful low life of a great port the poetry of ships from strange seas. the babel of all earth's tongues made the world forget the old mission times before the Grin EOS came"
 Burst from Frisco the tender-tough singer or the Heather Chinee, the historian of the Luck of Roaring Camp" the wildly luxuriant genius of Bret Harte He gave us the west fixed forever as Scott and Burns gave us Scot land: Dumas, France; Cervantes, Spain.
 With the romance that headquarters In Frisco Mark Twain savored his mes sage of fun to the world and developed his talent until he Is today not perhaps, but undoubtedly, our chieftest man of letters. his gift immortalizing Tom Saw ver'' and "Huck Finn" ciassicizing "The Humping Frog, vindicating "Ariep Shelley and interpreting for us the sane tity of Joan of Are.
 In Frisco Richard Realfe sang few songs unforgetful. and, harrassed by misfortune slunk away to die to the nusic of De Mortius Nil Nisi Bonum, a noem ranking surely with "Thanato- pis.''
 And then a little man, poor, unknoWn' a printer, almost starving, meditating Tn this city of the Golden Gate on the prob lem of the House of Have and the House of Need. This printer wrote book It set the economists by the ears. It chal- lenged the theologians. It shook Mann