Mr. Ralston’s manner entirely won my confidence. Besides, we had a direct way of doing business then, quite different from the dark-lantern methods of to-day. I simply laid down my cards on the table, face up. I told Mr. Ralston exactly what I had in mind; that my purpose was to solve the great problem of “Montgomery South” in a new way; that I considered it a matter of vast importance for the city’s future and one certain to bring fortune to the successful promoter. Mr. Ralston listened with deep attention, with an occasional word or nod of approval. When I concluded he leaned back in his chair in a meditative way and thought a minute. “It looks like a noble game,” he said at length. “Now, how would you like me for a partner?” I was just a bit astonished at the proposition, but I was gratified that the financial autocrat of the Pacific Coast wanted to climb into my band wagon. The arrangements were made with less “jockeying” than now takes place over a thousand-dollar transaction. I made a complete statement of my investments, which Mr. Ralston accepted, and made me an offer based on cost, plus a very handsome profit, for a quarter interest. I accepted also in an offhand way and deeds passed to correspond covering all my real estate involved in “Montgomery South.” It was understood that we would stand together to push the new street through to the bay, and that in this project I should have the practically unlimited support of the Bank of California. Our holdings were merged into a corporation, known as the Montgomery Street Land Company. Thus I became associated with this strange character, who has been dead almost forty years, yet whose name is still a household word to thousands and bids fair to be remembered long after those who pose as the truly great are asleep in forgotten tombs. I spoke of Ralston as a “strange” character. But the adjective doesn’t fit the case at all. There was just one Ralston in California. Perhaps his counterpart never lived before. It would be far beyond my powers to draw a sketch of a man so many-sided, but here and there some traits cropped out so prominent that they could scarcely miss the observation of a child. [Illustration: WM. C. RALSTON President of Bank of California, the first dupe in diamond fraud] Ralston had a marvelous head for business. The most difficult problems of finance were as simple to him as the alphabet and his mind cut through all perplexities and obstructions straight to the truth. Had he possessed a few less red corpuscles in his blood--been a plain, downright financier, I am certain that he would have grown beyond the narrow environment of the Pacific Coast and become one of the world’s money kings. But he had an odd supplement to the cold-blooded faculty of making money, a sort of richly Oriental imagination that looked far beyond the mere acquisition of a pile of cash.