woman starve before he would lend her five dollars on
a dead husband's ring, any more the friend of human-
ity than the grinding Jew who would ? So it is with
many of our popular prejudices — sift them and you
find no substance.
Oh, my prophetic soul, mine uncle! Many a proud head has bowed beneath the symbolic balls for the first time in California. Could the pledges at the shops of San Francisco pawn-brokers rise up and speak, what tales they would tell ; of what sighs, and poverty, and struggles, and despair they would speak ; of what broken vows, of what heartless cruelty, of what devoted love and self-sacrifice, of what agoniz- ing deaths! What touching, silent eloquence in those worn and faded articles, many of them once pledges of affection, now pledges of necessity !
Nothing smacked more strongly of the topsy turvy times, or was more characteristically Californian than these pawn-brokers' shops. Ten per cent, a month ; that was the rate charged, and the interest for one day was the same as for one month. Quick turns were likewise the rule, for the sharp-ej^ed Shylock re- ceived the right to sell pledges unredeemed at the ex- piration of one month. What a contrast there nmst be between pawn-brokers' pledges of different parts of the world. Here you see, scattered about the pawn-broker's boudoir, the materials for a first-class curiosity shop ; guns, revolvers, bowie-knives, swords, dress coats, camel-hair shawls, clocks, watches, dia- monds, meerschaum pipes, opera-glasses, books, gold- headed canes, flounced dresses, pictures, and every conceivable article of value which is not too cumber- some or difficult of transportation. This temple of distress, the necessitous of every class and caste ap- proach : the unsuccessful adventurer, the ruined game- ster, the bloated victim of dissipation. See that pale, broken-hearted widow approach with tremulous step. She is a novice still proud in her poverty. With un- easy glances at the passing witnesses of her disgrace,
