The "Golden Gate" of California is a maker of broken men and dreams. The bustle in the streets here, muddy, mired, impossible when it rains, which it frequently does, rivals that of New York in October but there are few women, and fewer gentlemen. All the races of the world are represented here, from German princes to the lowest of Mexican indians. All is gold, gold, gold! The City burns in patches, and is re-built it seems in but a day. The sound of hammering and cries of workers is constant, even into the evening. Competing bands at various houses of entertainment compete adding to the general cacophony of cries, hammerings, and stamp and clink of horses and vehicles. If there is a Hell, then it must be this. I retreated to this secluded Hong, in Chinatown. For some years, many hundreds, even above a thousand, of Chinese have been admitted on work permits to do the labor of women in the town, for the few women here are not laundresses, and they have built this little China, with all its vices and filth and strangeness, in the very center of the City. I have availed myself of one of their houses of rest, and restored my shattered self somewhat in that strange, malodorous berth. I have no ticket on a ship any longer, having traded it for opium with the keeper of this House, and very little coin or specie of any kind. How I shall ever leave this town, I do not know.
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