A MAN WHO LIVES AMONG SKELETONS - The San Francisco Call and Post San Francisco, California · Sunday, January 05, 1902
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OLD COLONEL DAILEY lives in the midst of skeletons. More than that, he has built him a house of them. He has woven the great bones and the small bones into joists and rafters and beams. He has shingled with them and clap-boarded with them. They are his roof and his shelter.
They are the skeletons of the great ships of the sea, the ships that sailed out of harbor and never came back. Bit by bit, as their scarred and broken spines and ribs and limbs were washed upon the beach, old Colonel Dailey gathered them in.
It is a strange fancy this, to live in the midst of death.
Not a plank, nor a window frame, not a shelf in this home of his but calls up a raging wind and groaning masts and wailing women and mad men.
Not a plank, nor a window frame, nor a shelf but is formed from the wreckage of a dead ship.
He has held this morbid fancy for eight years. Now his fear is that the little home, the home of skeletons, may be taken away from him.
Does it not seem as if a man might be granted at least this much to call his own?
A mere scrap of sand dune and upon it a tiny wreckage cabin, which he built with the labor of his own hands.
And yet even this scrap of dune and bit of a cabin is threatened.
Had Sutro, his friend, been alive, ah! what a difference there might have been.
Sutro owned that whole long streak of land and loved this old man and would have watched after him and protected him.
But now the estate owns the land.
Carved out of driftwood is this man's home, and for eight years has he listened to the beat of the surging waves and the hurtle of the winds.
One wonders why he comes to face the storms, but his health demanded God's ozone. He was no longer young. He had called on nature pretty hard and she was getting tired.
The year 1838 saw the birth of the colonel in Connecticut. When he came to man's estate he studied to become a physician, but the knife was hateful to him - he could barely witness an operation, the sight made him sick.
So when the Civil War broke out Mr. Dailey became military State agent for Connecticut, and was present at the horrors of Bull Run, Gettysburg and Fredericksburg.
Here, indeed, he got his fill of that which he most hated - the shedding of blood.
At Gettysburg the bullets hailed so fast that the trunks of trees were drilled with them and so undermined that they fell. In these three bloody battles he was here, there and everywhere attending the comforts of the wounded. The conscience of the man in the duties before him taught him to overcome and eradicate his loathing of bloodshed and help his comrades.
He was not always at the front. He had his house in Washington and received many men of note.
He did well and the people were proud of him; but the people forgot.
So many people in a nation do well at such a time, and so many in the war did more than well. It is easy to forget.
Later on, however, this little man was to the fore again and he became receiver of Government funds to the Territory of Arizona and that at a time when Arizona was licking the blood of the Texas hoof and was at her worst.
He stood the test and looked after claimants. He saw right done and was not afraid. Millions passed through his hands and he received the thanks of the Territory at the end of his administration.
Colonel Dailey came at last to San Francisco and ran in 1890 for Surveyor General.
The late Senator Stanford saw him several times and regretted that he could not support him, in that he was already working for another man. The Senator said Dailey's letters of recommendation were the finest he had ever read.
Eight years ago the colonel settled himself at the beach. His health had been failing him and he desired God's air, as it was brought to him over the sea and the breakers.
There was not much to go on when he went out there, but his friend, the ocean, stood by him and sent him driftwood and out of the presents from the sea he built him a house.
THIS MAN, WHO WAS ONCE MILITARY STATE AGENT FOR CONNECTICUT, FOUGHT THROUGH
THE CIVIL WAR, BECAME RECEIVER OF GOVERNMENT FUNDS TO THE TERRITORY OF
ARIZONA, RAN FOR SURVEYOR GENERAL OF CALIFORNIA, WAS A WARM FRIEND OF ADOLPH
SUTRO AND C. P. HUNTINGTON, AND NOW HAS FOR HIS HOME BUT A MERE SCRAP OF A
SAND DUNE AND A TINY WRECKAGE CABIN.
He planted and planted and the sand disappeared and the green came into evidence and the little place grew homelike.
It is as much home as any place can be to him. His wife is in the East and his friends are gone, never to come back.
They are on the other side of the divide.
C. P. Huntington was Dailey's best friend when he was alive and no one mourns his loss more than he does.
Born in the same town they had played together as children.
'Tis true as they grew to manhood they had gone their different paths. The one had been given Government positions, the other bent his will to building gigantic castles, not of air, but of solid iron, on which tons of steam machinery ran.
Each year, when the magnate visited the coast he came to Dailey's camp and to-day the colonel has no greater treasure than the glass, carefully wrapped in tissue paper, from which Huntington took his toddy.
That was three years ago.
When Mr. Huntington was going over the electric line on his last visit to the coast he bade the observatory car stop at the little station where Dailey's camp is and he looked over toward his old friend's cabin.
There was no face to greet him. His old friend lay in his bed with the high fever that pneumonia carries in its wake. They never saw one another again.
"If I could only be sure of my little place I would be so happy," says the Colonel.
While Sutro was alive he felt sure and safe, but another old friend went and he is afraid.
Old, worn out with the work he has faithfully performed for the nation, Colonel Dailey still bears a brave front. He is grit through and through, and his home is home after all, and he still keeps it and improves it.
But every day he asks himself the question: "Shall I be allowed to live here until I join my friends 'over the divide'?"
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