Tremendous Excitement in San Francisco!
By Editor
WERE we to follow the custom of the daily papers, and fill the half of this column with display heads, we could hardly give our readers any idea of the immense and intense excitement which has swept over the inhabitants of San Francisco with the fury of a hurricane and tidal wave combined. The excitement of the election on the new constitution was a mere trifle compared to this. The coming State election—one of the most important that has ever been held in the State—creates only a mild breeze; even communism looks pale, and Kearney is almost forgotten. The Lotta Fountain, on the most public corner in the city, has been inclosed to the height of sixteen feet or more, to afford conspicuous bulletin boards, where the crowds watch with earnest anxiety for the latest news concerning the all-absorbing subject of most vital interest. San Francisco has never been so convulsed, so terribly shaken to its foundations, since the great earthquake of 1868. But we must no longer conceal from the expectant reader the cause of this marvelous uprising of the people. It is this: some “pedestrians,” or tramps, have been walking or running a race in the Mechanics’ Pavilion! Please, reader, do not think we have used irony, and exaggerated the interest in this worse than trifling event. Read the following, cut out of the report in a daily paper:— “The huge building has rarely held so many thousands—never a mass of humanity so tumultuous and enthusiastic. On the floor within the rail the crowd eddied, surged, boiled, bubbled, gathered into knots, expanded into scattering waves, circled like a maelstrom or flowed in opposing currents, that were ever in turmoil and conflict. The closely packed spectators stood up squarely against the track, like the waves of the Red Sea parted for the passage of the Israelites. The seats on either side were over-filled.” Every class in the great city was well represented. The same paper says:— “There were owners of railroads, bank Presidents, brokers, wholesale merchants, orthodox church members and music teachers—in fact, nobody was absent in whose private exchequer could be found the requisite half-dollar admission fee. It was a not unpleasant and certainly leveling sight to see the liberated convict thrusting his acute elbow into the abdomen of the plethoric judge who had sentenced him, and was at the moment too intent on the spavined strides of the leading pedestrians to be aware of the antithesis of such malodorous fellowship.” It is well known that people will sit hours in a theatre, when a religious service grows tedious in fifty minutes, but the pleasure-seekers (pleasure, indeed!) are not now satisfied with the ten or eleven o’clock closing of the theatres, but another day’s report says:— “It has become the correct thing, the fashion, apparently, to visit the Pavilion, now, after leaving the theatre.” “The numerous lady spectators were lazily fanning themselves, wondering if any other attraction in the world would induce them to sit on hard board benches until 2 o’clock in the morning.” At the close of this contest, another was commenced, and for six days longer female tramps amuse the idle crowd which gathers day and night to behold. If the whole world is not going insane, what shall we think of this? We cannot find suitable terms with which to express our feelings at such huge exhibitions of popular folly. Nonsense has become the only wisdom of the masses. “Truth has fallen in the streets.” This world is in a deplorable condition. It was created for God’s pleasure and glory. Man was appointed to happiness through obedience and holiness. But God is mocked; his name and authority are held in contempt; his law is despised, and the great body of those who have the form of godliness deny its power. They have no knowledge of vital, earnest godliness. They have no interest in the cause of suffering and perishing humanity. Fashion and folly only engage their deepest attention. And the watchmen sleep! May the Lord send forth his light, and his truth, and gather out of the darkness of this lost world a people to his own name and glory. May the missionary spirit take deep hold of the faithful of the earth, that they may realize their responsibility, and save themselves from this untoward generation.