The magnificence of the silver trumpets and the quantity and splendor of the silver trappings of those fire companies pass all belief.  It begins to seem to me now, as I write, that I must have dreamed it,—­it was all so much too fine for any ordinary use.  But I know that I did not dream it; that there was never anything truer or better or more efficient anywhere under the sun than the San Francisco fire department in the brave days of old.  Representatives of almost every nation on earth could testify to this, and did repeatedly testify to it in almost every language known to the human tongue; for there never was a more cosmical commonwealth than sprang out of chaos on that Pacific coast; and there never was a city less given to following in the footsteps of its elder and more experienced sisters.  Nor was there ever a more spontaneous outburst of happy-go-luckiness than that which made of young San Francisco a very Babel and a bouncing baby Babylon.

[Illustration:  Warner’s at Meigg’s Wharf]

VII.

A BOY’S OUTING

There was joy in the heart, luncheon in the knapsack, and a sparkle in the eye of each of us as we set forth on our exploring expedition, all of a sunny Saturday.  Outside of California there never were such Saturdays as those.  We were perfectly sure for eight months in the year that it wouldn’t rain a drop; and as for the other four months—­well, perhaps it wouldn’t.  It is true that Longfellow had sung, even in those days: 

    Unto each life some rain must fall,
    Some days must be dark and dreary.

Our days were not dark or dreary,—­indeed, they could not possibly be in the two-thirds-of-the-year-dry season.  It did not rain so very much even in the rainy season, when it had a perfect right to; therefore there was joy in the heart and no umbrella anywhere about when we prepared to set forth on our day of discovery.

We began our adventure at Meigg’s Wharf.  We didn’t go out to the end of it, because there was nothing but crabs there, being hauled up at frequent intervals by industrious crabbers, whose nets fairly fringed the wharf.  They lay on their backs by scores and hundreds, and waved numberless legs in the air—­I mean the crabs, not the crabbers.  We used to go crabbing ourselves when we felt like it, with a net made of a bit of mosquito-bar stretched over an iron hoop, and with a piece of meat tied securely in the middle of it.  When we hauled up those home-made hoop-nets—­most everything seems to have been home-made in those days—­we used to find one, two, perhaps three huge crabs revolving clumsily about the centre of attraction in the hollow of the net; and then we shouted in glee and went almost wild with excitement.