The most characteristically Western survival of the “days of forty-nine” were the San Francisco bars—not speaking of the smartest ones, for those I seldom invaded. There was nothing less than ten cents in the town; nickels they gave away and pennies were thrown down the gutter. Everything was sold in terms of “bits.” Of course, there were two- and four-bit coins, but a one was the survival of the mixture of currency that had gotten into the land. Mexican, Canadian, French, etc., small silver coins were all bunched together as “bits,” and eight were called a dollar, making one the value of twelve and one-half cents. A drink theoretically cost a “bit,” but if you gave a quarter in payment, you received ten cents change. They were bound to take ten cents if you offered it, but too many deals of this kind in the same place elicited some such muttered remark as, “Tight Easterner,” or, “Why don’t you take some of the furniture along with you when you go?” The free lunch, which was _really_ free, was served by gorgeous big men in clean white aprons, and for the price of one drink, you could have such a repast as boiled mutton and caper sauce, salmon and cream gravy with mashed potatoes, all sorts of biscuits, apple pie, fruit, and coffee. Should you dare offer a tip to this husky waiter (or, indeed, to anyone in all California at that time), you ran the risk of a strong right arm or, worse still, a tongue-lashing such as you had never heard in the effete East. The price of a newspaper was also vague, but you were on the safe side if you offered Willie no less than a dime; for silver and gold were the only metals this child cared for. Coppers and nickels he threw into the gutter and made you a present of the paper, remarking that if you were so poor as that he would give you one. Willie was a character. We never knew where he came from or where he lived, but he had a face like one of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s angels and must have been the model who sat to the Lord for the type of “Mother’s Darling.” He was under ten years old, slight and rather tall, with great blue eyes and curly yellow hair. His occupations were selling matches by day and newspapers by night, and when business was slack he amused himself by calling ribald verses—parodies on such popular songs as “Pop Goes the Weasel”—at the bankers who passed by without buying. He stammered badly, adding much to the effectiveness of some of the lines. His passion was gambling, and his first utterance on meeting an acquaintance was, “M-m-m-m-match you for a dime?”