for the Southern people, and will see that they are protected in all
their rights. Perhaps if I were to go among them in person, it might
have a good effect. What do you think?"

I looked at him keenly as I made some suitable reply, but could see
nothing in his expression but simple sincerity. He seemed to feel that
he was indeed the father of his people. George Washington himself could
not have adopted a more paternal tone.

Walking along the street behind the Emperor one day, my curiosity was a
little excited by seeing him thrust his hand into the hip-pocket of his
blue trousers with sudden energy. The hip-pocket, by the way, is a
modern American stupidity, associated in the popular mind with rowdyism,
pistol shooting, and murder. Hip-pockets should be abolished wherever
there are courts of law and civilized men and women. But what was the
Emperor after? Withdrawing his hand just as I overtook him, the mystery
was revealed--it grasped a thick Bologna sausage, which he began to eat
with unroyal relish. It gave me a shock, but he was not the first royal
personage who has exhibited low tastes and carnal hankerings.

He was seldom made sport of or treated rudely. I saw him on one occasion
when a couple of passing hoodlums jeered at him. He turned and gave them
a look so full of mingled dignity, pain, and surprise, that the low
fellows were abashed, and uttering a forced laugh, with averted faces
they hurried on. The presence that can bring shame to a San Francisco
hoodlum must indeed be kingly, or in some way impressive. In that genus
the beastliness and devilishness of American city-life reach their
lowest denomination when the brutality of the savage and the lowest
forms of civilized vice are combined, human nature touches bottom.