Port O' Gold: A History-Romance of the San Francisco Argonauts

This is the story of San Francisco. When a newspaper editor summoned me from the mountains to write a serial he said: "I've sent for you because I believe you love this city more than any other writer of my acquaintance or knowledge. And I believe the true story of San Francisco will make a more dramatic, vivid, human narrative than any fiction I've ever read. "Take all the time you want. Get everything straight, and put all you've got into this story. I'm going to wake up the town with it." To the best of my ability, I followed the editor's instructions. He declared himself satisfied. The public responded generously. The serial was a success. But, ah! I wish I might have written it much better ... or that Robert Louis Stevenson, for instance, might have done it in my stead. "Port O' Gold" is history with a fiction thread to string its episodes upon. Most of the characters are men and women who have lived and played their parts exactly as described herein. The background and chronology are as accurate as extensive and painstaking research can make them. People have informed me that my fictional characters, vide Benito, "took hold of them" more than the "real ones" ... which is natural enough, perhaps, since they are my own brain-children, while the others are merely adopted. Nor is this anything to be deplored. The writer, after all, is first an entertainer. Indirectly he may edify, inform or teach. My only claim is that I've tried to tell the story of the city that I love as truly and attractively as I was able. My only hope is that I have been worthy of the task.