Robert Welles Ritchie

“ The farewell ball in the spacious Saleeby mansion was all that anybody, except perhaps the sunshine-fruit-and-flower—fed governors themselves, could demand. The California Silver Cornet Band furnished the music; all the broad veranda overlooking the river was canvassed for dancing; a fairyland of winking lanterns lay among the orange trees. Members of the governors’ committee, designated by broad badges, had now come to the easy, confidential relation of joking with the visiting executives about the eruption which refused to fill an engagement. ”

“ As a matter of truth, Sacto is unfortunately placed in relation to its depot. A quarter of a mile of red dust separates Main Street from the railroad track, and tarweed is thicker than real-estate signs along the intervening distance. But once you turn the corner of the Bone & Gimball Building—three stories and a clock tower—you find yourself in one of those typical valley towns of California—hustling to make its trousers meet its shoe tops and planning to put a crease in the former and a polish on the latter after the junction has been happily formed. ”

“ But if ever a man was fitted by natural gifts and the education which comes of their application to make a mountain move over his way, that man was Simeon C. Gunn. Trouble was that he hooked up with a mountain which, as a mountain, possessed much the same temperament that Gunn did as a man. That mountain happened to be Lassen. ”

“ On this summer’s day, when the fire bell summoned the citizens of Sacto to witness the ninetieth matinee performance of the Sierra smoke blower, the door to the Occidental bar swung many, many times behind the missionary of Sacto’s salvation and material for his converting. Long after Lassen had finished his act—the mountain was an irregular performer, remember—members of the town council and of the Sacto Board of Trade had feet on the rail and were hearkening to winged words. ”

“ Hot, blue-white sky, white and dun pyramid of the distant peak, reverse Niagara of tumbling blackness ascending to make a smear against the bowl of the sky—all this color magic and tremendous disruption of an ordered sky line progressed without the faintest whisper of a noise ”

“ Gunn moved on his philanthropical mission of doing Sacto good. He had the excellent intention of striking while the volcano was hot.
Now when Simeon C. Gunn struck, in the course of his affairs, it was with more foot pounds of energy and a heavier caliber of oratory than any man of his weight and class from Del Norte to San Bernardino. He was a Native Son, remember, and a Native Son does not have to be persuaded that California is the only unmortgaged piece of God’s country in the sisterhood of States. ”

“ Right there on Major Saleeby’s veranda Sacto’s representative citizens decided to raise two thousand dollars and capitalize Mount Lassen for the greater glory of the town. Committees were appointed—finance, ways and means, entertainment, et cetera; a tentative program of entertainment of the governors—aside, of course, from the great spectacle of the guaranteed eruption—was fashioned, and Gunn was empowered to take up with the railroad people the matter of a special train from Frisco. ”

“ Gunn’s voice dropped" to a tense, confidential timbre. “Raise a fund for expenses and entertainment; place that sum in my hands within a week, and before I spend a five-cent nickel of it I'll have the promise of at least twenty-five of those twenty-nine governors to accept Sacto’s invitation, come up here in a body, be the guests of your lively little city, and view the volcano. The value of my services I place at the reasonable sum of a thousand dollars—including the management of every detail.” ”

“ Introducing the man who was born to do good to towns. Nothing was too big for him; hence this more or less true story of Mr. Gunn and the trained volcano that was to bring the world to Sacto’s doorstep.
MR. SIMEON C. GUNN—“Self-cocking Gunn,” his intimates called him—was born to do good to towns, just as Julius Cæsar was born to cross the Rubicon. It was a matter of predestination. He did good to his native town of Visalia at a very tender age by starting a grass fire, which in turn set the courthouse afire and burned it to the foundation ”

“ In the end he cut a gem of innuendo, which left his listeners to infer that Simeon C. Gunn found it no more difficult to guarantee a timely eruption of Lassen than the presence of the governors to witness the same. Happily none of the other confrères appeared to share the skepticism of Councilman Harkins,’ and the weak span in Gunn’s bridge of dreams held up. ”