Such an incident is the
basis of Frank Norris's novel, "Moran of the Lady Letty," and although
the novel draws it pretty strong, it is not exaggerated. Ten years ago
the police, the Sailors' Union, and the foreign consuls, working
together, stopped all this.
Kearney street, a wilder and stranger Bowery, was the main thoroughfare
of these people. An exiled Californian, mourning over the city of his
heart, has said:
"In a half an hour of Kearney street I could raise a dozen men for any
wild adventure, from pulling down a statue to searching for the Cocos
Island treasure." This is hardly an exaggeration. it was the Rialto of
the desperate, Street of the Adventurers.
These are a few of the elements which made the city strange and gave it
the glamour of romance which has so strongly attracted such men as
Stevenson, Frank Norris and Kipling. This life of the floating
population lay apart from the regular life of the city, which was
distinctive in itself.
The Californian is the second generation of a picked and mixed ancestry.
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