forth at night to feast on unclean things, and fatten on rottenness and corruption. Some of them have parents in California, doubtless, but the great majority have left homes in some far-off land, where they are often spoken of with pride by confiding mothers, sisters and brothers, who know nothing of their actual status in society here—well for them that they do not. "I have a son in California. I have not heard from him in several years, but he was doing well when he wrote last," says a fond mother in the Atlantic States. Well for you, oh mother, that you cannot stand with us this evening, and see him floating with the tide, a hopeless wreck, along the slime-covered shores of the Barbary Coast! From the "deadfalls," as the low beer and dance cellars are designated, which line both sides of the street, and abound on all the streets in this vicinity, come echoes of drunken laughter, curses, ribaldry, and music from every conceivable instrument. Hand-organs, flutes, pianos, bagpipes, banjos, guitars, violins, brass instruments and accordions mingle their notes and help to swell the discord. "Dixie" is being drummed out of a piano in one cellar; in the next they are singing "John Brown;" and in the next, "Clare's Dragoons," or "Wearing of the Green." Women dressed in flaunting colors stand at the doors of many of these "deadfalls," and you frequently notice some of them saluting an acquaintance, perhaps of an hour's standing, and urging him to "come back and take just one more drink." Ten to one the already half-drunken fool complies, and finds himself in the calaboose next
