boom was more than balanced by the realty appreciation of his key-
holdings at Sacramento and Oakland.

And, to cap it all, when "Lucky" Richard Forrest had lost everything
in a series of calamities, so that San Francisco debated what price
his Nob Hill palace would fetch at auction, he grubstaked one, Del
Nelson, to a prospecting in Mexico. As soberly set down in history,
the result of the said Del Nelson's search for quartz was the Harvest
Group, including the fabulous and inexhaustible Tattlesnake, Voice,
City, Desdemona, Bullfrog, and Yellow Boy claims. Del Nelson,
astounded by his achievement, within the year drowned himself in an
enormous quantity of cheap whisky, and, the will being incontestible
through lack of kith and kin, left his half to Lucky Richard Forrest.

Dick Forrest was the son of his father. Lucky Richard, a man of
boundless energy and enterprise, though twice married and twice
widowed, had not been blessed with children. His third marriage
occurred in 1872, when he was fifty-eight, and in 1874, although he
lost the mother, a twelve-pound boy, stout-barreled and husky-lunged,
remained to be brought up by a regiment of nurses in the palace on Nob
Hill.

Young Dick was precocious. Lucky Richard was a democrat. Result: Young
Dick learned in a year from a private teacher what would have required
three years in the grammar school, and used all of the saved years in
playing in the open air. Also, result of precocity of son and
democracy of father, Young Dick was sent to grammar school for the
last year in order to learn shoulder-rubbing democracy with the sons
and daughters of workmen, tradesmen, saloon-keepers and politicians.