“I’ve got it, Loudon,” Pinkerton at last replied.  “Got the idea on the Potrero cars.  Found I hadn’t a pencil, borrowed one from the conductor, and figured on it roughly all the way in town.  I saw it was the thing at last; gives you a real show.  All your talents and accomplishments come in.  Here’s a sketch advertisement.  Just run your eye over it.  ’Sun, Ozone, and Music!  PINKERTON’S HEBDOMADARY PICNICS!’ (That’s a good, catching phrase, ‘hebdomadary,’ though it’s hard to say.  I made a note of it when I was looking in the dictionary how to spell hectagonal.  ‘Well, you’re a boss word,’ I said.  ’Before you’re very much older, I’ll have you in type as long as yourself.’  And here it is, you see.) ’Five dollars a head, and ladies free.  MONSTER OLIO OF ATTRACTIONS.’ (How does that strike you?) ’Free luncheon under the greenwood tree.  Dance on the elastic sward.  Home again in the Bright Evening Hours.  Manager and Honorary Steward, H. Loudon Dodd, Esq., the well-known connoisseur.’”

Singular how a man runs from Scylla to Charybdis!  I was so intent on securing the disappearance of a single epithet that I accepted the rest of the advertisement and all that it involved without discussion.  So it befell that the words “well-known connoisseur” were deleted; but that H. Loudon Dodd became manager and honorary steward of Pinkerton’s Hebdomadary Picnics, soon shortened, by popular consent, to the Dromedary.

By eight o’clock, any Sunday morning, I was to be observed by an admiring public on the wharf.  The garb and attributes of sacrifice consisted of a black frock coat, rosetted, its pockets bulging with sweetmeats and inferior cigars, trousers of light blue, a silk hat like a reflector, and a varnished wand.  A goodly steamer guarded my one flank, panting and throbbing, flags fluttering fore and aft of her, illustrative of the Dromedary and patriotism.  My other flank was covered by the ticket-office, strongly held by a trusty character of the Scots persuasion, rosetted like his superior and smoking a cigar to mark the occasion festive.  At half-past, having assured myself that all was well with the free luncheons, I lit a cigar myself, and awaited the strains of the “Pioneer Band.”  I had never to wait long—­they were German and punctual—­and by a few minutes after the half-hour, I would hear them booming down street with a long military roll of drums, some score of gratuitous asses prancing at the head in bearskin hats and buckskin aprons, and conspicuous with resplendent axes.  The band, of course, we paid for; but so strong is the San Franciscan passion for public masquerade, that the asses (as I say) were all gratuitous, pranced for the love of it, and cost us nothing but their luncheon.

The musicians formed up in the bows of my steamer, and struck into a skittish polka; the asses mounted guard upon the gangway and the ticket-office; and presently after, in family parties of father, mother, and children, in the form of duplicate lovers or in that of solitary youth, the public began to descend upon us by the carful at a time; four to six hundred perhaps, with a strong German flavour, and all merry as children.  When these had been shepherded on board, and the inevitable belated two or three had gained the deck amidst the cheering of the public, the hawser was cast off, and we plunged into the bay.