We boys all became smelters, and for a very good reason.  There was a market for soft solder; we could dispose of it without difficulty; we could in this way put money in our purse and experience the glorious emotion awakened by the spirit of independence.  With our own money, earned in the sweat of our brows—­it was pretty hot work melting the solder out of the old cans and moulding it in little pig-leads of our own invention,—­we could do as we pleased and no questions asked.  Oh, it was a joy past words,—­the kindling of the furnace fires, the adjusting of the cans, the watching for the first movement of the melting solder!  It trickled down into the ashes like quicksilver, and there we let it cool in shapeless masses; then we remelted it in skillets (usually smuggled from the kitchen for that purpose), and ran the fused metal into the moulds; and when it had cooled we were away in haste to dispose of it.

Some of us became expert amateur metallists, and made what we looked upon as snug little fortunes; yet they did not go far or last us long.  The smallest coin in circulation was a dime.  No one would accept a five-cent piece.  As for coppers, they are scarcely yet in vogue.  Money was made so easily and spent so carelessly in the early days the wonder is that any one ever grew rich.

A quarter of a dollar we called two “bits.”  If we wished to buy anything the price of which was one bit and we had a dime in our pocket, we gave the dime for the article, and the bargain was considered perfectly satisfactory.  If we had no dime, we gave a quarter of a dollar and received in change a dime; we thus paid fifty per cent more for the article than we should have done if we had given a dime for it.  But that made no difference:  a quarter called for two bits’ worth of anything on sale.  A dime was one bit, but two dimes were not two bits; and it was only a very mean person—­in our estimation—­who would change his half dollar into five dimes and get five bits’ worth of goods for four bits’ worth of silver.

[Illustration:  City of Oakland in 1856]

Sunday is ever the people’s day, and a San Francisco Sunday used to be as lively as the Lord’s Day at any of the capitals of Europe.  How the town used to flock to Telegraph Hill on a Sunday in the olden time!  They were mostly quiet folk who went there, and they went to feast their eyes upon one of the loveliest of landscapes or waterscapes.  They probably took their lunch with them, and their families—­if they had them; though families were infrequent in the Fifties.  They wandered about until they had chosen their point of view, and then they took possession of an unclaimed portion of the Hill.  They “squatted,” as was the custom of the time.  The “squatter” claimed the right of sovereignty, and exercised it so long as he was left unmolested.