compliment they were quick to appreciate.

He came gaily to his fate filled with high hopes of owning his own
newspaper before long and ranking as the leading journalist in the
great little city made famous by gold and Bret Harte. He was one of
many in New York; he knew that with his brilliant gifts and the
immediate prominence his new position would give him the future was
his to mould. No man, then or since, has brought so rare an
assortment of talents to the erratic journalism of San Francisco; not
even James King of William, the murdered editor of the _Evening
Bulletin_. Perhaps he too would have been murdered had he remained
long enough to own and edit the newspaper of his dreams, for he had a
merciless irony, a fearless spirit, and an utter contempt for the
prejudices of small men. But for a time at least it looked as if the
history of journalism in San Francisco was to be one of California's
proudest boasts.

Masters was a practical visionary, a dreamer whose dreams never
confused his metallic intellect, a stylist who fascinated even the
poor mind forced to express itself in colloquialisms, a man of
immense erudition for his years (he was only thirty); and he was
insatiably interested in the affairs of the world and in every phase
of life. He was a poet by nature, and a journalist by profession
because he believed the press was destined to become the greatest
power in the country, and he craved not only power but the utmost
opportunity for self-expression.

His character possessed as many antitheses. He was a natural lover
of women and avoided them not only because he feared entanglements
and enervations but because he had little respect for their brains.