The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 44, July 1940 - April, 1941 Page: 30

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

after us. We had started to run up the bank toward the house
when I slipped on pebbles and plunged into the river. Della,
terrified, tried to fish me out with a stick; failing, she ran to
the house and called Mother, who dashed down, and when she
arrived at the river, saw me whirling by in the rapids below
the quiet hole into which I had fallen. Mother dived into the
swirling tide, succeeded in grasping my clothes, and was carried
down herself until stopped by a wooden post, the remains of
an old bathhouse lower down the river. To this she clung until
we were rescued by neighbors. I am told that I was apparently
lifeless, but they held me up by my heels, a gallon of water
ran out of my mouth, and I was given artificial respiration and
covered with hot blankets. Father was so overjoyed at our
rescue that he placed a stained-glass window in St. Mark's
Cathedral, depicting Pharaoh's daughter fishing Moses out of
the water.
Dean Richardson of St. Mark's was our closest friend, a man
with a large round head and a flowing beard, and a belly that
shook like a bowl of jelly when he told funny stories. Father
was his senior warden and superintendent of the Sunday school
at St. Mark's for thirty-five years. These men, both soldiers
and proud of the old South, were to me the beau ideal of
Southern chivalry.
Soledad Street, on which we lived, was only a few blocks from
Main Plaza, which was surrounded by innumerable saloons,
gambling-houses, a variety theater, and other rough joints.
Rich Mexicans and cowmen, lured by the white lights, came
to San Antonio in great numbers, and also bandits. I remem-
ber one night in which a great fusillade of shots was heard
soon after supper. Father rushed down to Main Plaza and
found that the proprietor of the Variety Theater and gambling
house, Jack Harris, and several of his gang had been killed by
a noted outlaw, Ben Thompson and his men, who had ridden
into the theater on their horses and shot it up.
A few months afterwards, when Ben Thompson had the
temerity to come again and walk with his gang into the theater,
he met with a bloody reply from a group of Harris's friends,
who rose from their hiding-place behind the orchestra screen
and poured a deadly volley into Thompson's men.
San Antonio was then the liveliest of Western towns, the
meeting-place of every type of man, drawn there by the fab-

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