at hand, and the returned wanderers, each in his turn, proceed to set forth their respective claims. And as the old man, their father, who it was agreed should arbitrate in their behalf, listened successively to their reports, and, as the impossibility of a decision, between claims so equally balanced, became constantly more and more apparent-thus leaving the contention between the young men as far from a settlement as ever-it needed no very close observation, to detect the ever deepening shadow which rested upon those benevolent features. It was, however, a shadow of but short continuance; for, hardly had Africanus brought his, the last report, to a conclusion, when the face of the old patriarch resumed, at least for a time, its wonted cheerfulness; and, drawing a slip of paper toward him, he proceeded to jot down such memoranda as these: "Vol. 2d, Chap. 4. Quixotism. Sunlight to the bats. Mammoth Cave. Vol. 3d, Chap. 9. Progress by Law, not against Law. Page 317, note at foot;" and others of a like description: all which, to the uninitiated, would have seemed only senseless jargon, but whose meaning was by no means hidden from those sons of his now in waiting, who saw lying before their eyes, even then, that huge pile of manuscript sheets, to which long years of laborious

study had been devoted, and which, now nearly completed, were soon to be given to the world under some such imposing title as this: "The Philosophy of Civilization, demonstrated by Historical Data, and illustrated by Examples drawn from the nineteenth century." I say by these, his sons, the explanation of these proceedings on the part of the old man, their father, was easily guessed at.

And now, having finished these jottings, and apparently becoming again sensible of the duty which awaited him as umpire between the contesting claimants, he thus addressed them:

"My sons, you bring back good proof, that you have not been idle during your year's absence. You seem to have been all alike diligent, and such like success has attended your labors, that I can award the precedence to neither. So far, the experiment has proved a failure, and yet it may in due time yield its fruit. But, of that hereafter. You are still young, and, as your ages are the same, I do neither of you injustice in postponing the decision another twelve-month. I will again provide the means. Go; and, this time, he who finds the wisest man shall win the prize."

Whether the young men accepted the terms thus imposed, and what was the result, we may perhaps learn hereafter.

IN the year One of the Founding of the City, came to San Francisco Mr. Karl Joseph Krafft, whose appearance in these pages is not, say certain of the spiritualistics, the first of his apparitions since he died.

Mr. Krafft was a German adventurer -an accomplished gentleman, a natural artist, poet, soldier, traveler, speculator. It was said he had been in his early youth an attendant on the person of Prince Metternich, in the capacity of page; that later in his life he had been an officer of Austrian cavalry-a probable story, to judge from his military carriage and habits, his gallant horsemanship, his habile familiarity with pistol and sword, and even a faint trace of uniform in his clothes. Somewhere

about 1839 he came to Valparaiso quite penniless-nothing extraordinary in a constitutional adventurer, especially in a German one, and more especially such a German adventurer as Mr. Krafft, whose life, if the latter part of it might represent the whole, had been a life of scrapes, and awkward shifts, and desperate passes.

Mr. Krafft was abundantly provided with letters of introduction from the most distinguished sources about European courts. Indeed, the genuineness of them was afterward sweepingly challenged in Valparaiso, no doubt by envious and detracting persons. Still it must be acknowledged that Mr. Krafft had a lively fancy, a fine inventive faculty, and a ready pen. Whatever those

qualities may have had to do with his letters of introduction, it is known that he quickly ingratiated himself in the favor of a rich Italian, the first of the foreign merchants: a success wholly due, perhaps, to his cleverness, his varied and useful accomplishments-especially as a linguist, in which character he was polyglot-and his adroit address, which was in a remarkable degree courtly after the manner of the old world, instructed, searching, wily, irresistibly charming.

In a short time Mr. Krafft became a principal confidential clerk in the mercantile house of his patron-a position which afforded his natural and acquired diplomacy the rarest advantages, and gave him opportunities for sudden strides of promotion of which he was by no means slow to avail himself. Perhaps some of the larger operations of the concern had not been of a sort to bear investigation; therefore Mr. Krafft investigated them diligently. All secrets were fish, that came to the cunning net of his finesse. No one doubted that Mr. Krafft had found something out-there was no other way of accounting for his proud and jealous patron's excessive and even loud partiality, his undisguised preference of the interloping and by no means popular adventurer, as a suitor for the hand of his daughter: indeed—as many an American naval officer knows, who, on the Pacific station, and at Valparaiso, has been admitted to the delight of her society-the most beautiful, the most accomplished, the most altogether charming Señorita in Chili or Peru. When the lovely Maria was married to Mr. Krafft, which happened before long, there were those who said they would not mock her with congratulations. I think their consideration never met with lively appreciation from the lady; for certainly, if her regard for her husband was but an enforced liking at first, there is reason to believe that it became a profound, and naturally a blind, passion in the end. Mr. Krafft was a winning man; he had, in a degree as eminent as I have ever known, the trick of procuring the love even though its ingenuity were sadly taxed to invent excuses for him-he was bent on having. The eyes, the lips, the mind, the culture, the soul of Maria were things worth the winning, and Mr. Karl Joseph Krafft was master of the ways to make them his.

Very soon the son-in-law became a partner in the patron's business; immediately, one brilliant speculation after another, all successful; and then a sublime failure-a sort of Paradise Lost among the epics of speculation— which swallowed them all up. When Mr. Krafft sailed for San Francisco in Forty-nine, the white haired Italian had just died a broken-hearted, halfwitted bankrupt, and the incomparable Maria, with her three little Kraffts, was in the most picturesque straits, a pretty pensioner on the bounty of her father's old friends.

My acquaintance with Mr. Krafft was made under somewhat singular circumstances, when he was cashier in the custom-house. A very San Franciscan incident, on that occasion, drew out some of his peculiarities and showed him to great advantage. Having occasion to visit a medical friend of mine, on Sacramento street, I was conversing with him in his office, when two forlorn wretches, one far gone in consumption, the other utterly disabled by rheumatism, were brought to the door by comrades not much better off than themselves. They had an order from the Alcalde. My friend was to "render them all immediately necessary relief and attend them professionally at their lodgings; he would also provide them with the proper medicines, nursing and nourishment, and charge the city for the same, according to the regulations provided in such cases."

"Now here," said my friend, "is the beauty of being a doctor in good standing in this golden anomaly of a city called San Francisco. These men, being sick, destitute, friendless, and completely wretched, apply to the Alcalde for relief. There is no public hospital, no hospital fund, no city physician. The Alcalde cannot quarter them on the Town Council, for the simple reason that the Town Council is here to-day and gone to-morrow, their tenure of office being regulated for the most part by the vicissitudes of business in their respective vocations-lightering, muledriving, peddling, or bar-keeping, as the case may be. He cannot convert the Town Hall into a hospital; for what was a rum-shop yesterday will, as likely as not, be a church to-morrow. He can hardly share his own couch with them; since, even if its dimensions were more liberal than they are, soft planks are but

poorly adapted to the joints of this man or the lungs of that. So he sends them to me to be bedded and boarded, as though I were Abraham's bosom, and had a natural affinity for old sores and purulent expectoration. I am to provide them with the necessary medicines, nursing and nourishment; that means that I am to clothe, nurse and cook for them, till they die or get well, at my proper expense, for the pleasure and fame of my own beneficence. And I am to attend them professionally at their lodgings; that means that I am to perform perilous navigation through the municipal quagmires two or three times daily or nightly, as may be required, to a hide tent in Happy Valley-so called because it is the most unhappy locality on God's earth-or the loft of a Sidney convict's hell at Clarke's Point. And I am to charge the city; and that means that I am to present my humble bill a great many times to the Town Council, whose 'petitioner will ever pray,' etc.; by the time I have become quite desperate and have exhausted my resources of interest, bribes and blasphemy, they will refer it to a long succession of special committees to be audited-each committee cordially voting me a bore, wishing me, and my accounts, and my benevolence, and my grievances, all at the devil together; at last some verdant committee man, who has not been long in the business, will get my bill passed, by dividing the total by two; and finally the Comptroller will put the crowning glory on the whole by ordering me paid in city scrip at fifty cents on the dollar. Some thousands of dollars in the vocative, I shall console myself with my first-rate grievance, and count on eloquent sympathy, and public meetings, and the thanks of public-spirited people, while my patients, rheumatic, phthis ical, and the rest, will vote me a rapacious villain, and seriously discuss the expediency of lynching me. That, briefly summed up, is just what this paper means."

But the regulations," I asked"according to the regulations in such cases provided'-what does that mean?"

"That means the Alcalde's authority, voted him by the Town Council at my expense, to send my forlorn friends here to sleep in my bed and share my pot-luck. So, if you have indulged in any friendly hopes that, because my practice is worth from eighty to a hun

dred dollars a day, I shall go home with a splendid pile in a few steamers, please remember this paper, consider the price of blankets and board-to say nothing of my own boot-leather-and moderate your transports."

"Why not make a statement of the matter, in the light in which you are now presenting it to me, to the Town Council, in person?"

"So I did. Gentlemen,' said I, 'do you take me for Sam Brannan, or Burgoyne's Bank, or Mr. Steinberger, or the Mariposa diggins? Is your servant a whole row of front water-lots on Clarke's Point that he should do this munificent duty?'-And they called me to order."

With this sally, my droll friend tupaed to his patients, whom-having ascertained the exact nature and gravity of their ailments, and provided them with medicines--he presently dismissed with a few cheering words, some money, and an order for food and lodgings. Then, rejoining me, he resumed the rather comical story of his troubles.

In the midst of it, a gentleman entered, whose peculiar appearance I noted with interest then, and have ever vividly remembered since: a man of medium stature, slender, but very graceful, with almost effeminate feet and hands-the former neatly shod, the latter scrupulously kept and with a certain appearance of fragility; very soft blue eyes, sleepily curtained with drooping lids; a classically correct nose; short upper lip; a light moustache of somewhat military cut, precisely trimmed; rosy, moist, sensuous lips; a most fine lower jaw and chin; hair light, thin, straight, and soft as a child's. His clothes, which he wore with an officer-like air, consisted of a claretcolored coat, neither dress nor frock, but mixed of both fashions, with a velvet collar and brass buttons; a black velvet vest, double-breasted; iron-gray pantaloons; fresh, well-starched, and very fine linen; plain black cravat, tied with a kind of picturesque negligence; a cambric handkerchief of fastidious texture, and dark brown kid gloves. He wore gold spectacles, and carried a Malacca cane, with an elaborately carved gold head, having his name and a date on the top, which suggested some memorable occasion, perhaps a compliment, and a presentation. His complexion was unnaturally flushed, or

rather stained, as though by a refined intemperance. He had a singular trick of caressing his lips, even prettily, with the tip of his tongue, between his talk; and when he spoke his chin trembled, like that of a man whose nerves are unstrung, who is more or less spasmodically inclined. And yet there was a most rare deliberation, gentleness, and a graceful composure in his manner, as of one who, to use his own favorite and frequent expression, never "fashed himself." His attitudes were simply chosen and full of sense-his gestures few, quiet, and a little quaint the whole man bred to the most polished courtliness, and expert in the management of his polite machinery. And yet, there was a degree of devil-may-careness about him, evidently not recently acquired, which made you curious to know him better; for in that, plainly, you were to look for the nature of the man -the rest came of his education and closest associations. In his figure was a decided stoop, which to your least examination betrayed tho elegant debauchee. This stoop, you perceived, could not be of long standing, for he was unmistakably conscious of it. Nor was it even a defect-he carried it with such a pleasant air, as one who thought scapegrace" of himself. And yet it imparted to him the appearance of more years than he had-for though but thirty-seven, as I learned, he passed for ten years older-and, with the complicity of the gold spectacles, betrayed him into being called, behind his back only, by a few graceless and irreverent youths, "Old Krafft."

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His talk was fluent, his words well chosen, the brokenness of his English rather in the deliberation of his utterance, the slow procession of his words-which had a perceptible interval between them, as though they were measured off with dashes-than in any vice of grammar or pronunciation. When he speaks, my reader will try to remember this. His utterance was just that which, to me, has always seemed best adapted to convey the ideas of Kurz Pacha in the

Potiphar Papers. """ This is the way to take life, my dear. Let us go gent-ly. Here we go back-wards and for-wards. You tick-le, and I'll tick-le, and we'll all tick-le-and here we go round, round, round-y!' We will not fash ourselves"-comically beating time with both his white hands.

Mr. Krafft had come to take the doctor to a poor devil he had in his bed at home, who, for all his lungs were ruined, and he hadn't any friends or any money, had a notion that he'd like to live a little longer.

"We'll go presently," said the doctor. "But sit you down now, Krafft, and hear what I was just saying to my friend here; for you'll be sure to get into the Town Council, if it ever happens to be worth your while; and then you'll be put on one of my special committees, and rather than fash yourself with inventing excuses to put me off, you'll have me paid, and do something for my rheumatics and consumptives besides."

And then, resuming his story, with even more of a melancholy drollery than before, he soon made the affable German sympathetically sensible of the wrongs that were put upon him.

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Where," inquired Mr. Krafft, "are these new patients you speak of-the person with the lungs, and the other person with the joints, I mean

now?"

"Oh, close by-at Ay-cow, the Chinaman's, chop house."

"Let us go get them. We will lay them before the Alcalde immediately. I think he will audit and pass them very quickly, without waiting for the meeting of the Council or your special committee."

And Mr. Krafft rose, and passed out, as though all he meant was very apparent, and very easy to do, and nobody need fash himself with the why or how of it.

"Come along," said the doctor to me; "I've no idea what he's up to; but he'll do something out of the common, and it will be pretty sure to be the best thing to do under the circumstances. It is not fair to fash' him beforehand."

In a short time we had dragged our astonished invalids from their rude bunks, or rather pens, over Ay-cow's feeding place, and, one on each arm of our German friend, were conducting them in solemn procession to the Alcalde's office. It was mid-day, and his Honor was in all the pride, pomp, and circumstance of full court-a time most opportune for the purposes of Mr. Karl Joseph Krafft. Pushing, with his bewildered protegés, straight to the green table in front of the judge's bench, he

abruptly interrupted the business of the court with a characteristic address:

"Your Honor, and gentlemen,-We are very sick, and hungry, and helpless, and wretched. If somebody does not do something for us, we shall die; and that will be hard, considering how far we have come, and how hard it was to get here, and how short a time we have been here, and that we have not had a fair chance. All we ask is a fair chance; and we say again, upon our honor, gentlemen, if somebody does not do something for us, we shall die, by God! We have told the Town Council so, and offered to prove it; but they were busy running streets through their own lots, and laying out grave-yards in everybody's else's, and so, you see, they wouldn't fash themselves with our case. Our friend, the doctor here, will tell you all about us. He hopes you will take us up and pass us at once; and he thinks, as we do, that if something isn't done for us, very soon, we shall be setting fire to the town first, and then cutting all our own throats." "This is an extraordinary piece of business, doctor; what does it all mean?" inquired his Honor.

So the doctor told over again his story, as he had told it to us a little while before-only this time he deliver ed it with more gravity, indeed with a telling touch of pathos, and a dash of indignant expostulation. And at the close, Mr. Krafft-catching, and turning to quick account, the popular mood, as the rapidly increasing and curious crowd, moved by the doctor's tale, closed around his protegés, pitying, scolding, and advising all at once-Mr. Krafft, taking off his cap and throwing three ounces into it, said:

"Gentlemen, we head the subscription for our own relief with fifty dollars; and as there are a great many of us we need a great many ounces. But we tell you again, if something is not done for us, we shall die in the streets, and then we shall all smell very bad, and everybody will become infected with typhus fever, and we shall set fire to the city and cut our throats."

So saying, he held out his cap with a bow, and a most winning smile, to the crowd. In a very few minutes it was almost full of ounces. Pouring them out on the table, in a careless, generous heap, he said:

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There, Mr. Alcalde-we lend you

those. In a few days we shall come to ask what use you made of them. And you can say to the Council for us, that if they have no time for such cases as ours, they need not fash themselves about water-lots or street improvements."

He led out his invalids in triumph"approved and ordered to be paid," as he said; and as he conducted them across the Plaza toward Sacramento street, he was followed by three hearty cheers.

The appropriation of a hospital fund, and the first steps toward the founding of a City hospital, followed closely upon Mr. Krafft's coup de main.

Going, one day, aboard an American barque, just in after a long and ugly voyage, Mr. Krafft found an insane passenger, who had not tasted food for several days, nor spoken for several weeks.

Our queer friend became at once warmly interested in the case: an interest, indeed, which he evinced for every man whose equanimity was violently disturbed, or who had fashed himself to such excess as to go crazyseeming to regard him from a purely scientific stand-point, as a phenomenon not to be slighted by the philosophic mind. Mr. Krafft asked many questions about the crazy passenger, and the spirit of his investigations conciliating all the rest, he was overwhelmed with officious information. From some bushels of foolish gabble he sifted a grain or two of useful fact-such as that the man, an Irishman, had been a laborer, very industrious and trustworthy-a sort of head man or overseer of shoveland-pick gangs on railroads and canals; that he had been ambitious, and had set his heart on rising to the post of con

tractor.

Mr. Krafft at once conceived the idea of curing this man. Requesting to be left alone with him for a while, he took a seat beside him, and talked-quietly, kindly, very naturally-of his old pursuits, asking no questions, not seeming to be aware of his companion's witlessness, indeed compelling himself to quite forget it. At first his efforts were rewarded only with the same vacant stare which had repaid the more benevolent of the poor fellow's comrades, who had already endeavored to inspire him with an idea or a remembrance. But presently, when Mr. Krafft began to talk of splendid contracts, of millions of