out $22 each, making up $500 for a special. Mr. Frank Maskey, the candy man of San Francisco, he of the large diamond, who had appreciated my invitation to lunch after a fast of two days, paid for me, and we sped on at the rate of a mile a minute and reached New Orleans in time.
I put up with the rest of them at the St. Charles Hotel, and at night went to the fight with a letter for admission from the editor of the Mercury.
I can describe the fight briefly by saying that owing to Fitzsimmon’s roughness and general coarse bringing up, I never had an occasion to even unwrap the banner that cost $150. So the next day I traded it off to a colored boy for an alligator, thinking at the time I would exhibit the alligator at the small towns on the road the following season. ’Twas the first one I had ever seen and I thought they were worth a great deal of money until next day the chambermaid in the St. Charles Hotel told me they cost thirty cents.
The next evening in the hotel lobby, Billy Vice of San Francisco came up to me and said, “Here is your $22; I got the railroad
