The removal of the Belasco family from Victoria to San Francisco was not attended by material prosperity, and for several years the family suffered the pinch of poverty. Young David keenly felt the necessity of helping his parents, and by every means in his power he tried to do so. His conduct, in those troublous years, as it has been made known to me, not only in conversations with himself, but in communications by his surviving relatives, provides a remarkable example of filial devotion. As a lad, in Victoria, he had shown surprising facility in learning the Indian language and frequently had acted as interpreter for Indians who traded with his father; also, he had manifested that lively and shrewd propensity for trading which is peculiar to the Jew. As a lad, in San Francisco, while attending school as often as possible, he regularly remained at home, after the morning session, every Friday, in order to assist his mother in washing clothes for the family, a labor which, being then of low stature, he could perform only by standing on a large box, thus being enabled to reach into the washtub. He would also help his mother in the drudgery of the kitchen, and then often do for her the necessary household marketing for the coming week; and he would make up, every week, the records and accounts of his father’s business in the shop. When neither at school nor occupied at home he would seek and perform any odd piece of work by which a trifle might be earned. He was by nature a book-lover and acquisitive of information: he had access to several public libraries, but he craved ownership of books, and from time to time he earned a little money for the purchase of them by recitations, sometimes given in the homes of his friends, sometimes at church entertainments, sometimes at Irish-American Hall and other similar places. For each of such recitations he received two dollars, and on some nights he recited two, three, or four times. As he grew older, especially after 1868, his efforts to obtain employment at theatres grew more and more constant, and, as already said, they were occasionally successful. His activities, indeed, were such that it is a wonder his health was not permanently impaired,—but he was possessed of exceptional vitality, which happily has endured. Once he worked for a while as a chore-boy in a cigar store and factory, where he washed windows, scrubbed floors, and rendered whatever menial service was required, opening the place at morning and closing it at evening. That was a hard experience, but it led to something better, because the keeper of the cigar-shop, taking note of him and his ways, procured for him a better situation, which for some time he held, in a bookstore. There he had access to many books, and he eagerly improved every opportunity of reading. A chief recreation of his consisted in haunting the wharves, gazing at the ships, and musing and wondering about the strange tropical lands from which they came and to which presently they would sail away.