Shear, in a hoarse but admiring aside.

"When Mr. Hammersley was mayor," continued Hathaway.

"Had an official position--private secretary--afore he was twenty,"
explained Shear, in perfectly audible confidence.

"Since then the city has made great strides, leaping full-grown,
sir, in a single night," said Captain Stidger, hastily ascending
the rostrum again with a mixed metaphor, to the apparent concern of
a party of handsomely dressed young ladies who had recently entered
the parlor. "Stretching from South Park to Black Point, and
running back to the Mission Dolores and the Presidio, we are
building up a metropolis, sir, worthy to be placed beside the
Golden Gate that opens to the broad Pacific and the shores of far
Cathay! When the Pacific Railroad is built we shall be the natural
terminus of the Pathway of Nations!"

Mr. Hathaway's face betrayed no consciousness that he had heard
something like this eight years before, and that much of it had
come true, as he again sympathetically responded. Neither was his
attention attracted by a singular similarity which the attitude of
the group of ladies on the other side of the parlor bore to that of
his own party. They were clustered around one of their own number--
a striking-looking girl--who was apparently receiving their
mingled flatteries and caresses with a youthful yet critical
sympathy, which, singularly enough, was not unlike his own. It was
evident also that an odd sort of rivalry seemed to spring up
between the two parties, and that, in proportion as Hathaway's
admirers became more marked and ostentatious in their attentions,