CITY NEWS.
The Earthquake.—One of those shocks that terra firma is heir to, visited our city on Thursday evening last, Feb. 5th, in the shape of an earthquake. Having given the oscillating movement a fair trial on its previous visits, the present tremblor adopted a different system of tactics, and addressed itself to the brick and mortar recipients of its favor in a ” straight up and down” style. A great commotion was occasioned by its endeavors at demolishing our city. One individual in a hardware store was in the act of picking up an article he had dropped, and the first intimation he received of the coming of the tropical visitor was the floor’s flying up and rapping him on the forehead, and continuing its gay, bounding movement until it brought him to a sitting position on its surface, while around him in all directions rattled his wares, shaken from the shelves by the shock. As soon as he could attain a standing position he rushed for the street, and for fifteen minutes obstinately refused to reenter his store. The streets in which brick buildings are most numerous were at once thronged by a multitude of fugitives from those tenements. In this flight the lawyers rushing out from their offices are said to have been foremost, which is not to be wondered at, those worthies being probably well satisfied that if a retributive movement was on foot they were pretty certain to receive a full share of its consequences. The moon looked down in cold grim satisfaction on the scene, while the wind sprung up to join in the spree, and dashed through the streets as if every man’s hat in turn were public property and required immediate transportation to some point distant from his head. Enterprising newspaper reporters went about like roaring sheep, seeking whom and what they might record in their chronicles of destruction, and gave the results of their evening’s labors in weak paragraphs, undistinguished by the mention of a single important casualty. So much for the last shock. May it be permanently the last
(The Library of Congress lists the Wide West as a semi-monthly newspaper published in San Francisco between 1854 and 1858. This excerpt was taken from the California Digital Newspaper Collection.)