rather stained, as though by a refined intemperance. He had a singular trick of caressing his lips, even prettily, with the tip of his tongue, between his talk; and when he spoke his chin trembled, like that of a man whose nerves are unstrung, who is more or less spasmodically inclined. And yet there was a most rare deliberation, gentleness, and a graceful composure in his manner, as of one who, to use his own favorite and frequent expression, never "fashed himself." His attitudes were simply chosen and full of sense-his gestures few, quiet, and a little quaint the whole man bred to the most polished courtliness, and expert in the management of his polite machinery. And yet, there was a degree of devil-may-careness about him, evidently not recently acquired, which made you curious to know him better; for in that, plainly, you were to look for the nature of the man -the rest came of his education and closest associations. In his figure was a decided stoop, which to your least examination betrayed tho elegant debauchee. This stoop, you perceived, could not be of long standing, for he was unmistakably conscious of it. Nor was it even a defect-he carried it with such a pleasant air, as one who thought "scapegrace" of himself. And yet it imparted to him the appearance of more years than he had-for though but thirty-seven, as I learned, he passed for ten years older-and, with the complicity of the gold spectacles, betrayed him into being called, behind his back only, by a few graceless and irreverent youths, "Old Krafft."

His talk was fluent, his words well chosen, the brokenness of his English rather in the deliberation of his utterance, the slow procession of his words-which had a perceptible interval between them, as though they were measured off with dashes-than in any vice of grammar or pronunciation. When he speaks, my reader will try to remember this. His utterance was just that which, to me, has always seemed best adapted to convey the ideas of Kurz Pacha in the Potiphar Papers. "This is the way to take life, my dear. Let us go gent-ly. Here we go back-wards and for-wards. You tick-le, and I'll tick-le, and we'll all tick-le-and here we go round, round, round-y!' We will not fash ourselves"-comically beating time with both his white hands.

Mr. Krafft had come to take the doctor to a poor devil he had in his bed at home, who, for all his lungs were ruined, and he hadn't any friends or any money, had a notion that he'd like to live a little longer.

"We'll go presently," said the doctor. "But sit you down now, Krafft, and hear what I was just saying to my friend here; for you'll be sure to get into the Town Council, if it ever happens to be worth your while; and then you'll be put on one of my special committees, and rather than fash yourself with inventing excuses to put me off, you'll have me paid, and do something for my rheumatics and consumptives besides."

And then, resuming his story, with even more of a melancholy drollery than before, he soon made the affable German sympathetically sensible of the wrongs that were put upon him.

“Oh, close by—at Ay-cow, the Chinaman's, chop house."

"Let us go get them. We will lay them before the Alcalde immediately. I think he will audit and pass them very quickly, without waiting for the meeting of the Council or your special committee."

And Mr. Krafft rose, and passed out, as though all he meant was very apparent, and very easy to do, and nobody need fash himself with the why or how of it.

"Come along," said the doctor to me; "I've no idea what he's up to; but he'll do something out of the common, and it will be pretty sure to be the best thing to do under the circumstances. It is not fair to 'fash' him beforehand."

In a short time we had dragged our astonished invalids from their rude bunks, or rather pens, over Ay-cow's feeding place, and, one on each arm of our German friend, were conducting them in solemn procession to the Alcalde's office. It was mid-day, and his Honor was in all the pride, pomp, and circumstance of full court-a time most opportune for the purposes of Mr. Karl Joseph Krafft. Pushing, with his bewildered protegés, straight to the green table in front of the judge's bench, he

abruptly interrupted the business of the court with a characteristic address:

"Your Honor, and gentlemen,--We are very sick, and hungry, and helpless, and wretched. If somebody does not do something for us, we shall die; and that will be hard, considering how far we have come, and how hard it was to get here, and how short a time we have been here, and that we have not had a fair chance. All we ask is a fair chance; and we say again, upon our honor, gentlemen, if somebody does not do something for us, we shall die, by God! We have told the Town Council so, and offered to prove it; but they were busy running streets through their own lots, and laying out grave-yards in everybody's else's, and so, you see, they wouldn't fash themselves with our case. Our friend, the doctor here, will tell you all about us. He hopes you will take us up and pass us at once; and he thinks, as we do, that if something isn't done for us, very soon, we shall be setting fire to the town first, and then cutting all our own throats." "This is an extraordinary piece of business, doctor; what does it all mean?" inquired his Honor.

So the doctor told over again his story, as he had told it to us a little while before-only this time he delivered it with more gravity, indeed with a telling touch of pathos, and a dash of indignant expostulation. And at the close, Mr. Krafft-catching, and turning to quick account, the popular mood, as the rapidly increasing and curious crowd, moved by the doctor's tale, closed around his protegés, pitying, scolding, and advising all at once-Mr. Krafft, taking off his cap and throwing three ounces into it, said:

"Gentlemen, we head the subscription for our own relief with fifty dollars; and as there are a great many of us we need a great many ounces. But we tell you again, if something is not done for us, we shall die in the streets, and then we shall all smell very bad, and everybody will become infected with typhus fever, and we shall set fire to the city and cut our throats."

So saying, he held out his cap with a bow, and a most winning smile, to the crowd. In a very few minutes it was almost full of ounces. Pouring them out on the table, in a careless, generous heap, he said:

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There, Mr. Alcalde-we lend you

those. In a few days we shall come to ask what use you made of them. And you can say to the Council for us, that if they have no time for such cases as ours, they need not fash themselves about water-lots or street improvements."

He led out his invalids in triumph"approved and ordered to be paid," as he said; and as he conducted them across the Plaza toward Sacramento street, he was followed by three hearty cheers.

The appropriation of a hospital fund, and the first steps toward the founding of a City hospital, followed closely upon Mr. Krafft's coup de main.

Going, one day, aboard an American barque, just in after a long and ugly voyage, Mr. Krafft found an insane passenger, who had not tasted food for several days, nor spoken for several weeks. Our queer friend became at once warmly interested in the case: an interest, indeed, which he evinced for every man whose equanimity was violently disturbed, or who had fashed himself to such excess as to go crazyseeming to regard him from a purely scientific stand-point, as a phenomenon not to be slighted by the philosophic mind. Mr. Krafft asked many questions about the crazy passenger, and the spirit of his investigations conciliating all the rest, he was overwhelmed with officious information. From some bushels of foolish gabble he sifted a grain or two of useful fact-such as that the man, an Irishman, had been a laborer, very industrious and trustworthy-a sort of head man or overseer of shoveland-pick gangs on railroads and canals; that he had been ambitious, and had set his heart on rising to the post of contractor.

Mr. Krafft at once conceived the idea of curing this man. Requesting to be left alone with him for a while, he took a seat beside him, and talked-quietly, kindly, very naturally-of his old pursuits, asking no questions, not seeming to be aware of his companion's witlessness, indeed compelling himself to quite forget it. At first his efforts were rewarded only with the same vacant stare which had repaid the more benevolent of the poor fellow's comrades, who had already endeavored to inspire him with an idea or a remembrance. But presently, when Mr. Krafft began to talk of splendid contracts, of millions of

dollars' worth of work-of whole streets to be graded, and foundations to be dug, and an army of barrows and shovels and picks, the command of which he requested his crazy friend to accept the man's eye brightened and, laying his hand in Mr. Krafft's, he said in a low but decided tone, "I'll do it."

Then Mr. Krafft, assuming the responsibility for his safety-which, by the same token, they of the ship were very willing to resign, seeing that on the voyage out, the man, taking umbrage at something, had held the mate over tho rail by the waistband, while the ship was going twelve knots an hour-bade him come with him, and philosopher and madman went ashore together in a small boat.

The white School-house, near the Old Adobe, was the headquarters of the police then. It was on the west side of the Plaza, overlooking the heart of the young city and its busiest life. Thither Mr. Krafft conducted his crazy friend, and showing him the ground in front of the little building-indeed, in the very midst of what is now Portsmouth Square -told him his operations were to begin there. Then calling up a few policemen, whom with a word or two he inducted into the secret, he put them under the orders of his madman, and bade them bring shovels and picks-at the same time suggesting to the devil-possessed digger that it would be as well to break ground at once, as the rest of his working force, some thousands of able-bodied fellows, would be on hand presently. Not a word spake the madman-not a word had he uttered, since he said "I'll do it"-but flinging down his coat and hat, silently, with eyes wild, and teeth set, he went to work. Beautiful! how evenly, how steadily, how swiftly yet how fusslessly, he cleared the ground before him, tossing the flying shovelfuls with the flirt of a nimble gravemaker!

"Beautiful," cried Mr. Karl Joseph Krafft, exulting in the success of his experiment,beautiful! we are a trifle crack-brained, to be sure; but for digging we are worth a dozen philosophers yet -worth a hundred of some sorts of fellows who never had their little gusts of madness, never knew the luxury of returning reason. When this is through with, we shall be hungry, and then we shall eat; after that we shall feel congenial, and then we shall talk-shall talk

ourselves to sleep, shall dream, and have memories soothing and saving; shall awake, the sanest fellows in town, and never fash ourselves again about the devils that are cast out."

Steadily "the subject" worked on, and the field of his successes grew apace. But the sun had laid his heavy hand upon the bare head of the man, and was down-bearing, more and more heavily every moment, upon his brain; and a fiend flew along his veins and heated them, and twitched at his nerves till they quivered; and his fancy became filled with hostile shapes, as all the ground around was filled with curious spectators; so that at last, brandishing his spade, he flung himself upon the host before him, and the first man he laid low was his friend, philosopher and guide.

They bound him down, and gave him shower-baths, and expostulated with him; but he never spake, nor ate, again, till he died. And Mr. Karl Joseph Krafft said, picking up his cane, that no confidence was to be reposed in persons of that description; all impetuous people were fools, he said.

Mr. Krafft was one of the few men who had a home in San Francisco in Forty-nine; at least, he had a comfortable abode, a fireside, and a knot of friends to gather round it, with pipes and punch-to tell stories and play whist in the good old way. He had taken a better sort of adobe house on the corner of Dupont and Pacific strects, and put it in good repair with paint and plaster. Like all the adobe buildings of old Yerba Buena, it had but one story. The entrance, set fairly in the middle of the front, was on Pacific street; a narrow hall, from front to back door, divided the house, so as to give one large sitting-room on the right, and a smaller apartment, which was for a bedchamber, on the left, in front, with a kitchen behind it. The sitting-room, hospitably furnished, was Mr. Krafft's "spare room," and from the first he had warmly entertained in it one after another of self-appointed friends, or new but preferred acquaintances; so that, indeed, it was never without an occupant. His own apartment deserved to be styled luxurious, for San Francisco then. It had a marble floor, alternately tiled in black and white. The cornices showed a rude attempt at carving. Tho fire-place was a very throne of comfort.

There was an English brass bedstead, which Mr. Krafft, being justly proud of it, kept in a superfine state of brightness. A blue silk coverlid-the handiwork of his absent wife, no doubtadorned the bed, and over that, again, were laid two curious spotted skins, which came, he said, from Patagonia. There was an oaken chest of drawers, and a flawless old looking-glass; large camphor-wood chests, of genuine Canton manufacture, brass-bound and painted blue, were disposed about the room. On the walls hung portraits in oil of himself and his Maria-most lovely!and an unfinished sketch in water colors of his three children, in graceful group. A Wesson rifle stood in the corner next the door; a Mexican saddle and headstall, with serape, lariat, and spurs, hung on large wooden pegs near the foot of the bed. A cavalry sabre was between the windows, and a pair of German dueling-pistols hung, crossed, against the wall, within the curtains, at the back-part of the bed. Near the head of the bed, and always within reach of the arm of its occupant, stood an empty barrel, over the top of which a sort of shawl was thrown. Here lay at all times a loaded pistol, also of German make, having a curiously mounted and inlaid stock; and here every night, on retiring to bed, Mr. Krafft placed his watch, a valuable diamond ring and pin, some rare and curiously shaped specimens of gold, and whatever papers of value he may have had about his person that day.

When I knew Mr. Krafft, he was quite happy in this home of his. On returning from his afternoon ride to the Mission or the Presidio, which he regularly took when the day's business was over, he was wont to amuse himself with pistol practice at his back door; or he would take up the foils with some friend whose training had been German and military. Feats of strength and skill had always a peculiar charm for Mr. Krafft. I have heard him boast that he could stop a run-away horse with the pressure of his knees, and I have seen him disarm an antagonist of acknowledged expertness, with a nice movement of the wrist, most difficult to acquire.

One night, as he was returning late from the Plaza, where he had been recreating himself with monte, a party of Hounds, having attacked some Chilian tents on Dupont street, were driving out

the inmates, and setting fire to their canvas shelter. Some five or six of them had a hapless Chilena girl among them, and hustling her brutally about, were quarreling noisily for possession of her much coveted person. Mr. Krafft, with his gold-headed cane, felled four of them, to their extreme astonishment; and though, when the rest recovered from the shock, they fired their revolvers at him in the dark, he got off safely with the girl and led her tenderly to his own home. There he soothed her terror and consoled her grief, in his characteristic way, before returning to seek for her friends: "We must not cry," said he "we must not distract our little brains. So our bones or our hearts are not broken, we will not fash ourselves about the money, and the clothes, and the rest of the folks

'Io son ricco,

Tu sei bella.'"

And afterward, when the affair got to be talked of to his honor, the skill and dispatch with which the rescue had been effected were all that Mr. Krafft asked to be applauded for.

For a time I had much pleasure in the society of my eccentric friend. The striking quaintness of his character enhanced the charm of his conversation, which was full of unusual experiences, versatility of accomplishment, originality of opinion, delicacy of taste, refinement of sensibility, and a goodnatured, even comical, philosophy, which had in it a kind of universal quien sabe for all subjects and people. Not to fash ourselves, was the advice which Mr. Krafft was forever benevolently bestowing upon us, because he sincerely believed he had himself derived great advantage from steadily following it. So long as matters went towardly with him, his companionship was a privilege that I enjoyed with even a degree of jealousy; and on Sunday afternoons, as we walked to the old Switzer's house at Washerwoman's Bay, or the extemporaneous grave-yard at the foot of Telegraph Hill, and he amused, flattered, delighted, instructed, impressed, sadly moved me, in quick succession or all at once, I simply wondered how such a man came to be speculating in Pacific street lots, and cudgeling Hounds by way of a sandwich.

But a sudden, dreadful, and complete change came, no one knew whence,

He plunged stupidly into speculations, with little heed to the depth or current of them. With cards and dice, roulette wheels and rondo balls, he fooled himself to the top of his bent. He untuned the strings of his heart, so that the most skillful touches of his kindest friends could produce nothing but discord. He wounded all who loved him, and when they turned away their faces in sorrow for his shameful pass, sang, maudlin, his favorite song, the beautiful duet in Lucia, the invariable music of his cups

"Verranno la sull' aure,

I miei sospiri ardenti."

He entertained traitors and the cunning foes of his prosperity to the very bottom of his purse; they laid him "down among the dead men" nightly. Indeed, he bleared his eyes and bemuddled his brains with everlasting drams, till the devil of delirium tremens got among his poor wits.

One night, during the progress of one of his most desperate debauches, fearing some harm might befall him, from himself or others-for beside his rascally boon-companions, there were deceived creditors, who were dangerously incensed against him-I slept on the floor at the foot of his bed. Awakened, after midnight, by his piteous moaning, I arose, and was feeling about in the dark for a match, when he suddenly became quiet; but presently the profound stillness and darkness were disturbed by the crack of cap and a slight flash. He had stealthily got down one of his loaded pistols, and had tried to fire at me; fortunately only the cap snapped--the weapon was foul and hung fire. "My dear sir," said I, very quietly, knowing my man- "don't shoot me; that would be supremely stupid."

"Ah, my dear, good friend-is it you? I congratulate you. By God, do you know, I had you covered, dead. That only shows that one should not fash himself nervously about thieves,

One evening, about dusk, when the rest had departed, tired with their fruitless coaxing and cursing, a young man in whose generous confidence Mr. Krafft had formerly held the highest place, who had indorsed for him recklessly, whom, indeed, Krafft loved, but whom he had ruined-if a man could be ruined in California in Forty-nine-came, and in set phrases of insult, most deliberately, skillfully cruel, accused, condemned, punished him. They had been old and very intimate friends, which gave the creditor an almost dreadful advantage; he knew the "raws" of his man, and he tore them, till Mr. Karl Joseph Krafft could have shrieked. But he gallantly preserved his habitual composure, and only said

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If you will not stop saying such dangerous things, I have pistols at hand, and we must go behind the house together."

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"

No, sir," the other answered; I won't fight you; you must learn to be honest before you can afford to be brave. There is but one just debt, Mr. Krafft, that you will ever pay, and that's the debt of nature. Make society and your disgusted friends the only reparation in your power, by blowing your brains out with those very pistols you flourish so saucily."

"Well, I'll think about it," said Mr. Krafft.

The young man was going. But suddenly, by a most strange impulse, he turned, and walking straight to Mr. Krafft, he said “forgive me, sir.”