title: Jack London: San Francisco Stories
author: Jack London
description: Although born in 1876 near Third and Brannan Streets in San Francisco, Jack London lived much of his childhood eight miles across the bay in Oakland. From 1868 the city's Long Wharf was the last stop of the Transcontinental and Central Pacific Railroads. Oakland was a rough and vital place. As a child, London fed his tremendous appetite for reading at the Oakland Public Library. His early teens were spent at gruelling labour in a cannery. In his memoir of alcoholism, John Barleycorn (1913), London tells how he escaped that servitude to became an oyster pirate on San Francisco Bay with his own sloop, the Razzle Dazzle. Later he switched sides and became a member of the California Fish Patrol, which inspired the cycle of short stories collected in 1905. In 1893 London signed on to the schooner Sophie Sutherland and voyaged across the Pacific. The next year he was on the road as a hobo with Kelly's Army. It was only in 1895 that he was able to attend Oakland High School. After graduation and a brief stint at the University of California in nearby Berkeley, London sailed north to the Yukon for the Klondike Gold Rush. His experiences in the Northlands would lead to the creation of such classic works as The Call of the Wild (1903), White Fang (1906), and 'To Build A Fire' (1908). London would soon become one of the world's most popular writers. Never losing his love of travel and adventure, Jack London always returned to California. He eventually bought a ranch north of San Pablo Bay in Sonoma County. He died there at the age of forty on November 22, 1916. He had published over forty volumes - novels, short stories, non-fiction, and essays.
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  # The Night-Born
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Jack London
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### THE NIGHT-BORN
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  It was in the old Alta-Inyo Club--a warm night for San
  
  
  Francisco--and through the open windows, hushed and far, came
  
  
  the brawl of the streets. The talk had led on from the Graft
  
  
  Prosecution and the latest signs that the town was to be run
  
  
  wide open, down through all the grotesque sordidness and
  
  
  rottenness of manhate and man-meanness, until the name of
  
  
  O'Brien was mentioned--O'Brien, the promising young pugilist
  
  
  who had been killed in the prize-ring the night before. At once
  
  
  the air had seemed to freshen. O'Brien had been a clean-living
  
  
  young man with ideals. He neither drank, smoked, nor swore, and
  
  
  his had been the body of a beautiful young god. He had even
  
  
  carried his prayer-book to the ringside. They found it in his
  
  
  coat pocket in the dressing-room. . . afterward.
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  Here was Y