Strangely enough this made for lawlessness on both sides. Those who believed in "law and order" committed crime or misdemeanour or mere injustice, sure of escape through some technicality. Those who distrusted courts administered justice illegally with their own hands! Nor was this merely in theory. San Francisco at that time was undoubtedly the most corrupt and lawless city in the world. Street shootings, duels, robberies, ballot-box stuffing, bribery, all the crimes traceable to a supine police and venal or technical courts were actually so commonplace as to command but two or three lines in the daily papers. Justice was completely smothered under technicalities and delays. The situation would have been intolerable to any people less busy than the people of that time. For political corruption in a vigorous body politic is not, as pessimists would have us believer an indication of incipient decay, but only an indication that a busy people are willing to pay that price to be left alone, to be relieved of the administration of their public affairs, When they get less busy, or the price in corruption becomes too high, then they refuse to pay. The price Francisco was paying becoming very high, not only in money, but in other and spiritual things. She could still afford to pay it; but at the least pressure she would no longer afford it. Then she would act. XXXIII In the second year of his residence Keith had a minor adventure that shifted a portion of his activities to other fields. He was in attendance at a council meeting, following the interests of certain clients. The evening was warm, the proceedings dull. Opened windows let in the sounds from the Plaza and a night air that occasionally flared the smoky lamps. The clerk's voice was droning away at some routine when the outer door opened and a most extraordinary quartette entered the chamber. Three of these were the ordinary, ragged, discouraged, emaciated, diseased "bums," only too common in that city. In early California a man either succeeded or he failed into a dark abyss of complete discouragement; the new civilization had little use for weaklings. The fourth man can be no better described than in the words of a chronicler of the period. Says the worthy diarist: "He was a man of medium stature, slender but very graceful, with almost effeminate hands and feet--the former scrupulously kept, the latter neatly shod--and with a certain air of fragility; very soft blue eyes with sleepy lids; a classically correct nose; short upper lip; rosy, moist lips. His clothes: a claret-coloured coat, neither dress nor frock, but mixed of both fashions, with a velvet collar and brass buttons; a black vest, double breasted; iron-gray pantaloons; fresh, well-starched, and very fine linen; plain black cravat, negligently tied; a cambric handkerchief; and dark kid gloves. He wore gold spectacles, and carried a malacca cane."