For one thing, he had a passionate, almost pathetic love for California. He wanted to see his State and city great, prosperous, progressive, conspicuous throughout the world for enterprise and big things. I think it was this imagination, this ambition, that kept hurrying him into one big undertaking after another, many of which were way ahead of time. While he was stacking up money in one direction, with the skill of a great native-born financier, it was leaking out in various other ways for rolling mills, vast hotels, watch factories, woolen mills, furniture factories, and what not. It was only an ambition to say that San Francisco had the grandest and largest hostelry in the world that prompted him to build the Palace Hotel. And so on down the line. He tried to do everything, and, like others, failed in the end. With all of his tremendous business activities, I could never think of Ralston except as a big over-grown boy. He had an elasticity and buoyancy of spirits very seldom seen beyond the teens and a youth’s eagerness in the pursuit of pleasure. Nothing seemed to disturb his imperturbable good humor. He was at once the best winner or loser in the world--could pick up or drop a million with equal gaiety and nonchalance. He always smiled in conversation, but in moments of repose his features settled into an expression that was half thoughtful, half sad. Where he shone most perhaps was as a “mixer.” He had wonderful manners, frank, cordial, magnetic, and handed out the same quality to everyone alike. He avoided, either by design or inclination, all the pomposity and circumstance of greatness, even went out of his way to be extra gracious to those who seemed a trifle embarrassed in his presence. In this way he endeared himself to a small army of young men and to some of the still more youthful highbinders who used to visit the Bank of California and stand up the smiling financier for baseball club uniforms and other all-important incidentials upon which the fame and glory of California hung. As to the industrial classes, they simply worshiped Ralston. He was their constant provider, philosopher and friend. It seemed to me that he knew half of the working population by their first name, and he was known among them familiarly and affectionately as “Bill” Ralston. It is a sad commentary on human nature that in the hour of his misfortune the men he had enriched took to the tall timber. Only his humble friends proved true. This only gives the faintest glimpse of Ralston. For years I was his intimate associate. He was a man of many friends and many business connections, but I think he gave his entire confidence to only two men, Maurice Dore and myself. In all our relations I always found him punctiliously honorable and truthful, and though the acquaintance was a costly one to me, I hold his memory in affectionate remembrance--as I did when I last saw him forty years ago.