It became evident that an efficient fire department was an immediate and
imperative necessity. The best men of the city--men prominent in every
trade, calling and profession--volunteered their services, and headed a
subscription list that swelled at once into the thousands. Perhaps there
never was a finer volunteer fire department than that which was for many
years the pride and glory of San Francisco. On the Fourth of July it was
the star feature of the procession; and it paraded most of the streets
that were level enough for wheels to run on--and when the mud was
navigable, for they turned out even in the rainy season on days of civic
festivity. Their engines and hose carts and hook and ladder trucks were
so lavishly ornamented with flowers, banners, streamers, and even pet
eagles, dogs, and other mascots, that they might without hesitation have
engaged in any floral battle on any Riviera and been sure of victory.

The magnificence of the silver trumpets and the quantity and splendor of
the silver trappings of those fire companies pass all belief. It begins
to seem to me now, as I write, that I must have dreamed it,--it was all
so much too fine for any ordinary use. But I know that I did not dream
it; that there was never anything truer or better or more efficient
anywhere under the sun than the San Francisco fire department in the
brave days of old. Representatives of almost every nation on earth could
testify to this, and did repeatedly testify to it in almost every
language known to the human tongue; for there never was a more cosmical
commonwealth than sprang out of chaos on that Pacific coast; and there
never was a city less given to following in the footsteps of its elder
and more experienced sisters. Nor was there ever a more spontaneous
outburst of happy-go-luckiness than that which made of young San
Francisco a very Babel and a bouncing baby Babylon.

[Illustration: Warner's at Meigg's Wharf]