Sitting in the luxurious hall of the Occidental Hotel, it was strange to hear some of the older men talk of the bygone times, when they lived in huts that were sent out to them in pieces from the Eastern States round Cape Horn, to be delivered through the Golden Gates and put up in the old Spanish Town; and those log cabins meant soft comfort after the hardships of camp life, and the toil of the hunt for gold. John Mackay was one of the first men to call upon me, and we were much together. We used generally to have luncheon and dine at some restaurant. For the former being a one-idea man his order was always the same, given with a brogue, and a comic little stammer which were very amusing. “Waiter! let us have a t-t-tenderloin steak and let it be cooked r-rare!” In spite of Dryden’s authority, I never could get quite used to the word _rare_ in that sense. At last one day I said to him: “Mackay, you are an Irishman, and of course you know Moore’s ‘Irish Melodies.’ Do you remember that lovely song which begins: ‘Rich and underdone were the gems she wore’?” Mackay laughed, but he continued to order his steak “r-rare.” He was one of the simplest and kindest of men, with not a particle of purse-pride about him; just as modest and unpretentious as he was when as a lad he owned little more than the clothes he stood in; and now, still a comparatively young man, he had achieved riches which made him a real power in the world. A man who, among other ventures, can start a trans-Atlantic cable off his own bat, is something to be reckoned with. Kind as everybody in San Francisco was to the stranger that was within his gates, none was more hospitable than my poor friend Ralston. It was not only that he was lavish of expenditure. That in the ’Frisco of those days was nothing. Everybody threw money out of the window—the more the better. He was lavish of painstaking thoughtfulness for the comfort and pleasure of his friends; lavish of genuine and heartfelt kindness; lavish of a welcome which I felt was a joy to himself and which therefore could be accepted as it was offered. He organized the most delightful expeditions for the benefit of his many guests—long drives into the glorious mountain scenery, with three or four teams of four horses in readiness for a change at various points, and everything that forethought could devise for our comfort.