foolishness, and she arose and went out of there.  One lady who was coming down stairs was astonished to see a bronze Hercules lean forward on its pedestal as if to strike her with its club.  They both reached the bottom of the flight at the same time,—­the woman insensible from the fright.  Her child, born some little time afterward, was club-footed.  However—­on second thought,—­if the reader sees any coincidence in this, he must do it at his own risk.

The first shock brought down two or three huge organ-pipes in one of the churches.  The minister, with uplifted hands, was just closing the services.  He glanced up, hesitated, and said: 

“However, we will omit the benediction!”—­and the next instant there was a vacancy in the atmosphere where he had stood.

After the first shock, an Oakland minister said: 

“Keep your seats!  There is no better place to die than this”—­

And added, after the third: 

“But outside is good enough!” He then skipped out at the back door.

Such another destruction of mantel ornaments and toilet bottles as the earthquake created, San Francisco never saw before.  There was hardly a girl or a matron in the city but suffered losses of this kind.  Suspended pictures were thrown down, but oftener still, by a curious freak of the earthquake’s humor, they were whirled completely around with their faces to the wall!  There was great difference of opinion, at first, as to the course or direction the earthquake traveled, but water that splashed out of various tanks and buckets settled that.  Thousands of people were made so sea-sick by the rolling and pitching of floors and streets that they were weak and bed-ridden for hours, and some few for even days afterward.—­Hardly an individual escaped nausea entirely.

The queer earthquake—­episodes that formed the staple of San Francisco gossip for the next week would fill a much larger book than this, and so I will diverge from the subject.

By and by, in the due course of things, I picked up a copy of the
Enterprise one day, and fell under this cruel blow: 

Nevada mines in new York.—­G.  M. Marshall, Sheba Hurs and Amos H. Rose, who left San Francisco last July for New York City, with ores from mines in Pine Wood District, Humboldt County, and on the Reese River range, have disposed of a mine containing six thousand feet and called the Pine Mountains Consolidated, for the sum of $3,000,000.  The stamps on the deed, which is now on its way to Humboldt County, from New York, for record, amounted to $3,000, which is said to be the largest amount of stamps ever placed on one document.  A working capital of $1,000,000 has been paid into the treasury, and machinery has already been purchased for a large quartz mill, which will be put up as soon as possible.  The stock in this company is all full paid and entirely unassessable.