“Society,” said my friend sagely, “needs to be managed just as a circus is managed.  Of good family, with an independent income large enough to make him free from the necessity of work, and small enough to keep him from the time-using diversions of extravagance, with a knowledge of wines, and a bent for selecting the proper kind of buttons for the coat in which to attend a cock-fight, he was the man for his circle and age.  A Brummel?  Hardly that.  There was nothing of the ill-starred Beau in his appearance.  His influence was good, as Brummel’s was occasionally good.  You recall the saying of the Duchess of York to the effect that it was Brummel’s influence which more or less reformed the manners of the smart young men who were notorious for their excesses, their self-assertiveness, their want of courtesy.  He was more akin to the ill-favoured Richard Nash, whose wise autocracy helped so much in the redeeming of the city of Bath.”

After all, whether it was part pose, or whether the man was quite sincere in his professed belief in the profound importance of what most of the world is inclined to regard as trivialities, he was always consistent.  As a youth he went to live in the house of a relative, in Tenth Street, New York, when that neighbourhood retained a flavour of aristocracy.  A legacy of one thousand dollars fell to him.  It was his first legacy.  A cannier soul would have made the money go a long way.  He spent it all for the costume that he was to wear at the fancy dress ball that was to be given by Mrs. John C. Stevens at her residence in College Place.  “I flattered myself that it was the handsomest and richest costume at the ball.”  A little later, in 1850, he went to San Francisco, to join his father in the practice of law.  It was in the first days of the gold rush, when the city was in the making, and fabulous prices were paid for the commodities of life.  In the make-up of a man there had to be a certain amount of stern stuff if he was to survive in that struggle for existence.  Young McAllister prospered, and in the course of time built himself a house.  “My furniture,” he recorded, “just from Paris, was acajou and white and blue horse-hair.  My bed quilt cost me $250.  It was a lovely Chinese floss silk shawl.”  His talents as a giver of dinners were in evidence at that early age, and his father made use of them in connection with the law business.  There was a French chef, at a salary of ten thousand dollars a year.  High prices and scarcity served only as spurs to the young Petronius.

“Such dinners as I gave I have never seen surpassed anywhere,” he complacently recorded in later years.  Some one spoke to the elder McAllister of the admirable manner in which his son kept house.  “Yes,” was the sapient retort.  “He keeps everything but the Ten Commandments.”