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& Pioneer Who Qreated 2 Sensation on the Streets of Sacramento in UST forty-nine years ago Sacra- mento—maelstrom of all human emotions as it was, and had been ever since Marshall's wonderful discovery had acted as a load- =tone to bring men of all sorts and con- ditions to this common center—experi- enced a new and surprising sensation. Nothing that had up to that time ever occurred In that then feverishly busy and prosperous metropolis of Cal- ifornia had given such a decided shak- ing up to the entire community and created such unanimous and openly expressed interest as an event which took place during cne sunny afternoon of a perfect day in June of the year 1850, Robberies, murders and sulcides thers had been even then on this side of the strongest and poblest natures. These happeningsn, however, lacked the ele- man, who thereby i public attention for the hero of the more than one hardy in California who re- occurrence, which was fur more than The one who the town of Sacramento by storm dur- ing his brief engagement and made e “hit of the season.” marin B. Paul, for and now a resident of and a more than locally engineer and authority matters. brief thirty minutes or so, Mr., Paul was the cause of an entire sus- pension of business on the principal streets of Sacramento, in those days when every moment of a business hour was a golden one. And what, pray, was the agt which ke accomplished that had the power to work such an upheaval in the estab- lished customs of the mor town? What doughty deed for or what spectacle did he present, himseif the unwaver- e multitude and s of the public gaze? was the occasion of denly from com- ce the town was soccupied to take dividnals—into the riety? What was it that day a title which :j\‘orw P;'oneer Defended the e bowie alr TABBED shot, and with clubbed It et yet living to tell seems almost incred lllam Gardner of Sacramento bes his head and body the indisputable lence of his thrilling experience, an ay -of long-healed wounds is to a badge of homor, for he received while defending the “Stars and lare Gardner came to Commodore Sloat as a the United States g the bombard- ecelved wounds d honorably was afte from the nav arged with F ss, and it that brought in W. ST. C. (Photo by I. Boysen, Sacramento,) jlll ”;Q’ardner garly Days. has clung to him through all the al- most half-century of years that have passed since, and is as well known to his brother pioneers as is the name that is his own by birthright and baptismal ceremony ? He simply arrayed himself in such rments as a man of fashion In those ays would have worn for a promenade on a Parisian boulevard, or possibly, on the shady side of “the avenue” in the American metropolls, and took a leisurely walk along the principal streets of his temporary home. The result was chaos—business and soclal— for the entire period of his ramble. His costume was the epitome of ele- gance from the top of his shining tall beaver hat to the tips of his patent leather boots and the ends of his gloved fingers. He was simply a living expo- nent of correct masculine garments, as they were depicted in the French fash- fon plates which California, in those days, never saw; but had he been dressed in pink tights and the fluffy skirts of a feminine ballet-dancer he could not have created a more genuine sensation. To make fully understood the effect which Mr. Paul's raiment produced upon his townspeople it may be neces- sary, perhaps, to state that Sacramento at that time was emphatically a ‘“‘shirt and trousers town.” In a population of 15,000 or more there were less than fifty white women, and the men, feel- ing themselves free from all conven- tional restraints in the matter of ex- ternal adornment, dressed in the sim- plest and what seemed to them the most comfortable fashion. Blue or red flannel or checked gingham or seer- sucker shirts buttoned at the throat or not according to the weather or the fancy of the owner, and with their nether extremities tucked into the waistband either of trousers made of the roughest and most serviceable cloth, or of stout and baggy overalls; a pair of heavy boots with tops reach- ing to the wearer’s knees; and almost any kind of a hat that came handy— so it had a brim wide enough to pro- tect the eyes from whirling dustclouds and the glare of the sun—completed a costume that was perfectly satisfactory to every white man in California at that time. Not only miners and teamsters and those engaged in rough work generally arrayed themseives in this unpreten- tious and pensive manner, but even the merchan and clerks and other men who depe r their livelihood more on the exercising of their brains than their m S0 universal was this custom of rough-garbing that it early became an ‘ritten law in all the towns and g camps and it was a long time after the first gold excitement quieted down before a “biled shirt” was looked upon as being anything but a proof of effeminacy and general fool- ishness on the part of its mistaken wearer. Almarin B. Paul was, however, a Flag at Car- The Incident above alluded to ’_ told is own words p “Yes, I've had some pretty close cal but that little scrap in Carson City was one of those affairs that a man doesn’t care to run up against more'n once in ses I was run- S y, Nev., a regular red-hot rebel u see, about nine- about the 1st of August, - rode into town, his horse foam and before he was y on the ground, the news of the le of Bull Run had spread through camp like a prairie fire. “Right in the middle of town the boys had put up a pretty good-sized flag- staff and the next day after the news e of the battle of Bull Run I heard of the ladies had met and king a rebel flag, which was be run up in place of the nd stripes.’ d 'em at the time, says I, if you to take down that American flag Il have to do it over my dead body. “Iw Iy one of a handful of Yan- as o GARDNER, stout-hearted and adventurous young fellow in these days, and, besides, be dearly loved a joke. He was well known and well liked in Sacramento, as he and his partner, under the firm name of Paul, White & Co,, had dealt in general merchandise and miners’ hardware since the previous November, and it struck his youthful fancy that he would like to do something a little out of the common. He had been a prosperous young business man in St. Louis before com- ing to California, and when he packed his belongings for his long trip the whim had seized him to include among them a full suit of clothes of as ultra- fashionable a cut as a St. Louis tailor could provide, and with these every accessory that could possibly be con- sidered necessary to the toilet of a regular Beau Brummel. “I didn’t expect to wear them much, of course,” he says, if he can be coaxed to tell the story himself, smiling at the recollection of carrying this collection of masculine finery in his train and paying extra baggage on it all the way from Missouri across the isthmus and through the Golden Gate and up to Sacramento. “I just wanted to feel that I could dress up fine if I wanted to, but,” and he laughs again, “I never wanted to dress up but just one time in the first few years I was in California, and then I didn't stay dressed up for more than half an hour.” Elegant as were these garments which Mr. Paul brought with him from “the States,” fate threw another and far more gorgeous piece of raiment in his way before he reached his destina- tion, which.overshadowed all his pre- vious possessions in that special line. The steamer Oregon, for passage on which he and his companions held tick- ets, having become temporarily dis- abled by running upon some rocks on her return trip to Panama, 125 of the impatient travelers banded together and chartered the bark Eugene to make the trip to San Francis Among this number were several men of pro- nounced sporting proclivities, especially in the line of cards, and the long pas- sage of 104 days, due to many vexatious calms, gave these adventurers an ex- opportunity to prey upon their a son of an ex- York family, was ate in this con- long Defore the bark rea ination was rendered utterly penn by the superior skill of his supposedly friendly antagonists, who played with him, of course, “just to pass away the time.” In the unsuccessful young gamester had resort to his trunk by which to supply him- self with funds sufficlent to tide him over his troubles until such time as he could, secure a re- mittance from home. He had been trav- eling in Europe when the gold fever attacked him and among his valuable proofs of that fact was a coat for which THE SUNDAY CALL kees in Carson City, but I made up my mind I'd prevent that rebel flag from going up or die a-trying. “Well, about noon of the 5th of Aug- ust, '61—that’s when it happened—sth of Augu 61, word was brought to me that that vith the palmetto tree embr to be un- furled to the t that very day. “When I heard that T just locked up the store and, says I, not if Willlam St. Clare Gardner lives iong enough, there won’t be no rebel flag run up to- day. “Pretty near as quick as T can tell it I was at the foot of the flagstaff. ““The crowd was already there ahead of me, and I had only just time to see that the red, white and blue was still floating above our heads, and then I made a grab for that rebel flag. “Yes—I got it all right, and quick as a flash I wound it about my hand. ‘‘After that I was kept pretty busy for a few minutes. I didn’t have no gun nor nothing, but, if I do say it myself, in those days there wasn't many men could stand up before me in a single- hard-to-hand fight. “The fight was a little uneven that day, however. Fists don't count for much against bowie-knives and nistols, and three of the worst desperadoes in the country had undertaken to do me up. “They slashed and cut at me until the flag, which was still around my arm and with which I protected my face to some extent, was dripping with blood. The flag was buried afterward. “Finally one of them drew a pistol, and placing it right here, over my heart, fired. I guess providence must have had his eye on me that day, for the bullet went to one side. “Poor John Blackburn was United SBtates Marshal at that time, and he was the only man in the whole crowd that stood by me or tried to help me. His wife, by the way, was one of the ladies who made the rebel flag. He was trying to put an end to the unequal struggle, when the long keen blade of a bowie-knife was buried in his. heart. Poor fellow! He was a brave man, John was, “About the same time that poor John fell some one hit me a clip on top of the head that mashed in my skull and—; well, T didn’t know anything more until | I woke up in the hospital , “Nobody expected I'd live. But I told em when they all come stringin’ in to the hospital to see me, I told 'em I'd be allve twenty-five years after the fel- lows that tried to kill me were in their graves. “As it turned out, I was right, you see. Bill Mayfield was killed, not long after, in Placerville, Idaho, by a gam- bler, and Cherokee Bob was strung up for murdering two soldiers. “Henry Plummer, the third one, was afterward Sheriff of Boise County, Montana. Road agents were pretty thick in that part of the country just about that time and the strangest thing about it was that every time a stage' was held up the robbers made a big haul. ‘ “Folks began to get kind of suspi- clous and started a little quiet Investi- gation. They discovered that Sheriff Plummer was standing in with the road agents. Yes, sir, that's a fact. A few days after the' truth came out Plummer left for parts unknown—by the hemp line. I was in bed for two or three months after that. fight and the people in Car- son couldn't do enough for me. After got well, Governor Nye of Nevada gave | me a commission as second lleutenant | of Company A, Nevada Volunteers. | “Would I do it again if I had to?| ‘What, defend the flag, you mean? I'm & pretty old man, but while there's a breath in my body or a' bit of strength in my arms, it belongs to the star and stripes.” he had pald in Paris just previous to leaving that gay city the sum of 400 ‘rancs. Ascertaining the fact that Mr. Paul and himself were of precisely the same size he so importuned him to buy the garment that the young merchant against his wiser judgment and moved far more by the moneyless predicament of his fellow voyager than by any real desire for the coat's possession flnally consented to purchase it, and packed it away with his other sartorial treasures where it remained for eight long months before he ever dreamed of ex- hibiting it in public. The description of this coat, as given by Mr. Paul, fills . the modern mind with an emotion very nearly approaching to awe. It was, he states, of the very finest and best black French tweed, lined with heavy black satin, with the collar, lapels and cuffs hand embroidered—think of that, ye swagger dressers of to-day—in a most elaborate, exquisitely designed and ar- tistically executed pattern of leaf and bud and bloom worked in lustrous black silk. This was the crowning glory of the attire in which Mr. Paul took his fa- mous promenade up one side of J street and down the other on that long-cele- brated summer afternoon. And the men who possibly and indeed probably would have jeered at the bashful and apologetic appearance in their midst of even one small deviation from the es- tablished order of things in the straight and narrow way of ma ne attire stood simply spellbound before the ag- gregation of dazzlingsplendors of which young Paul was the motive power. “I did it just as a piece of fun,” he says, “but I didn’t feel a bit funny after I got the things on and- started out. Some of the other young fellows had kind of half-way dared me to do it, you see, and I thought it would be kind of a joke. It was no joke at all, though, I found, for a circus wouldn’t be more stared at than I was. Luckily there u were no little boys around then or I should have been the head of a regular pro fon As it was I never felt so much alone ; life as I did walking those few 1 the least slowly enough for to get d look at me that wanted, but wt zot back into my store I packed all away agair my gingham shir and ser about as quick as I cot niently manage it I would those dand f way to al- most & 1 for them about t many a long mon I ever wore The fan fternoon promen- ade, however, widely abroad, and from then S Paul has been known as th who had the courage to be really well- dressed man in Calif i “Quick-as a Flash 1 Woubd the Flag About My Hand.”