Meanwhile I was quietly buying a solid block of land straight through from Howard street to Market. It was broad enough to allow a wide street to be laid out in a line directly opposite to the ending of Montgomery, and thus change so many backyards into frontages on a fine thoroughfare--an extension of the city’s crowded mart. I wasn’t a prophet or the son of a prophet, but the enterprise looked good. Not only that, but it seemed certain to me that the extension of Montgomery street, once begun, either “straight” or at an angle, would be pushed ahead by the force of public opinion to its proper terminal, the waterfront of the bay. Most of this immense property, outside of the Sutter-street gore, was gathered in at prices so pitifully small that they would test the credulity of the reader. Excepting one other piece of property, the total investment was less than $500,000, and the wretched buildings on it yielded a net income of 1½ per cent. per month on this amount. However, this was looked on as a very poor return in those days when 2½ per cent. per month, compounded with the regularity of fate, could be obtained on well-secured loans. The money market was considered easy when borrowers could be accommodated on those terms. It all seems like some Monte Cristo story, but let me tell the young, ambitious reader that there are just as splendid opportunities staring him in the face to-day just waiting to be taken into camp. The region around the Bay of San Francisco is destined, beyond a doubt, to become one of the greatest world centers of population, commerce, business and production. The possibilities have barely been touched. Take it as the judgment of a close observer, with wide experience, that now is the time to get on board--using, of course, sound common sense and intelligent foresight. If I were 25 instead of 76, I would like to give the public an object lesson of how to make money. But I was a long time securing the Market street frontage necessary to carry out my plans. How I finally succeeded is quite an incident, well worth recalling, although it is ahead of my story. On the south side of Market street, exactly opposite the terminus of Montgomery street, stood a vacant fifty-vara lot, owned by a well-known old pioneer by the name of Selim Woodworth. I had bought sixty feet adjoining the church property where the Palace Hotel now corners. The Selim Woodworth lot was next to that. Now the owner had a very hard head and a rather top-heavy idea of the value of anything he possessed. Off and on I was negotiating with Woodworth for more than a year and a half, sometimes personally, sometimes through a broker, but always ran abruptly against the same proposition. “If you want that property it will cost you precisely half a million. There is nothing further to be said on the subject. Let’s turn the conversation to something else.” Nobody could have been more courteous or more firm.