I was born and brought up in Duxbury, Massachusetts, and I had a close call to escape bein’ named Wrestling Brewster, one of my mother’s family names. My father voted for just plain Eli Cook, howsomever, and dad most always generally won. It might have made considerable difference to me, maybe, for as it was, whether from my name or nature, I rather took after my father, who was no mortal good. Father was what Old Colony folks call “clever,” just a shif’less ne’er-do-well, handy enough when he got to work, but a sort of a Jack-of-all-trades and master of none. Never went to church, fished on Sundays, smoked like a chimney and chewed like a cow, easy to get on with and hard to drive—no more backbone than a clam, my mother used to say. And what he was, I am, with just enough Brewster in me to make me repent, but not enough to hinder me from going astray. I come out here to Californy in ’49, and hoofed it most all the way. I calculated to get rich without workin’, but I reckoned without my host. I looked for somethin’ easy till I got as thin as a yaller dog, and for twenty year I held on that way by my eyelids, pickin’ up odd jobs and loafin’ and whittlin’ sticks in between times. Then I got a place as driver on the Folsom Street hoss-car line, and that’s where I made my fortune by hook or crook, till I retired. If I’d had a drop more Brewster blood I wouldn’t have did what I did, but I kind of fell into the way of piecin’ out my salary the way every one else did who worked for the company, and my conscience didn’t give me no trouble for a considerable spell. It was only stealin’ from a corporation, anyway, and I reckoned they could afford it, with the scrimpin’ pay they give us. In them days the company ran them little double-ender cars with ten-foot bodies. When I got to the end of the route and drove my team round and hitched up at t’other end, I had to take out the old Slawson fare-box and set it up in front, for they didn’t have no conductors in early days. I s’pose I kind of hated to carry such a load of money, bein’ more or less of a shirk, and I got into the way of turning her upside down and shakin’ out a few nickels every time. They come out easy, I’ll say that for ’em, and it wa’n’t no trick at all to clean up a dollar or so every day, and twice as much on Sundays.