I was busy with other things besides real estate investments, financing railroads, and politics, during the five years between 1865 and 1870. In 1869 I built the first fine business block on the south side of Market street, the Harpending Block, between First and Second streets. It was also in 1869-1870 that Ralston and myself built the Grand Hotel, partly on our own land, partly on land belonging to the Platt estate, which we held under 20 years’ lease. The Harpending Block cost nearly $400,000. It was burned two years later, contributing the biggest fire in San Francisco since the ’50’s. Through an oversight of my agent, the insurance hardly represented a tenth of the loss. The Grand Hotel remained for several years the last word in the hotel business of the Pacific Coast. It was its phenomenal success from the outset that induced Ralston later to embark in the Palace Hotel project, which contributed in a large measure to his ruin. I owned a three-fourths interest in the Grand Hotel; Ralston owned the balance. No one who has ever had much to do with mining can keep out of that fascinating business very long. When I returned to San Francisco from Havilah, it was my solemn intention to abandon mining forever thereafter and confine my efforts to what was known as “legitimate business,” whatever that may be; I have never found out. But I hadn’t more than barely got my bearings before I began to make casual incursions in a sly way into the old field of endeavor, and thus had a personal and financial acquaintance with, I think, all of the heroic figures who created the vast deep-mining industry of the far West. Only one of these big men has lasted down to our own time. J. B. Haggin[A] still lives at his home in Lexington, Ky., at a great age--90 or more--and until recently in the enjoyment of good health. A story used to be current in San Francisco that in the early pioneer days Haggin was a devotee of play at the El Dorado and Union. One night, so the narrative runs, after successive losses he borrowed $100, to win or take the gambler’s last alternative. But he had no occasion for the latter. He stood calm and imperturbable as the hundred became a thousand, and then tens of thousands, while a circle of mute, white-faced gamblers stood fascinated at his luck, until the proprietor, in a voice that showed no tremor, quietly announced the bank closed for the night. The story goes on to say that Mr. Haggin never touched a card from that day forth. All of this I have only on hearsay. Mr. Haggin lives to tell whether it is true or false. [A] Since the above was written, Mr. Haggin died. [Illustration: J. B. HAGGIN Successful miner and a true financial genius]