There was a quick jerk under the soles of my feet, which pitched me prone upon the ground.  Scrambling up, I saw the old gentleman vanishing behind an adjacent sandhill as if the devil were after him.  The Mistake of a Life.

The hotel was in flames.  Mr. Pokeweed was promptly on hand, and tore madly into the burning pile, whence he soon emerged with a nude female.  Depositing her tenderly upon a pile of hot bricks, he mopped his steaming front with his warm coat-tail.

“Now, Mrs. Pokeweed,” said he, “where will I be most likely to find the children?  They will naturally wish to get out.”

The lady assumed a stiffly vertical attitude, and with freezing dignity replied in the words following: 

“Sir, you have saved my life; I presume you are entitled to my thanks.  If you are likewise solicitous regarding the fate of the person you have mentioned, you had better go back and prospect round till you find her; she would probably be delighted to see you.  But while I have a character to maintain unsullied, you shall not stand there and call me Mrs. Pokeweed!”

Just then the front wall toppled outward, and Pokeweed cleared the street at a single bound.  He never learned what became of the strange lady, and to the day of his death he professed an indifference that was simply brutal.  L. S.

Early one evening in the autumn of ’64, a pale girl stood singing Methodist hymns at the summit of Bush Street hill.  She was attired, Spanish fashion, in a loose overcoat and slippers.  Suddenly she broke off her song, a dark-browed young soldier from the Presidio cautiously approached, and seizing her fondly in his arms, snatched away the overcoat, retreating with it to an auction-house on Pacific Street, where it may still be seen by the benighted traveller, just a-going for two-and-half-and never gone!

The poor maiden after this misfortune felt a bitter resentment swelling in her heart, and scorning to remain among her kind in that costume, took her way to the Cliff House, where she arrived, worn and weary, about breakfast-time.

The landlord received her kindly, and offered her a pair of his best trousers; but she was of noble blood, and having been reared in luxury, respectfully declined to receive charity from a low-born stranger.  All efforts to induce her to eat were equally unavailing.  She would stand for hours on the rocks where the road descends to the beach, and gaze at the playful seals in the surf below, who seemed rather flattered by her attention, and would swim about, singing their sweetest songs to her alone.  Passers-by were equally curious as to her, but a broken lyre gives forth no music, and her heart responded not with any more long metre hymns.

After a few weeks of this solitary life she was suddenly missed.  At the same time a strange seal was noted among the rest.  She was remarkable for being always clad in an overcoat, which she had doubtless fished up from the wreck of the French galleon Brignardello, which went ashore there some years afterward.