Around the corner on Kearney Street was a concert hall, a dive, to which the admission was free.

Near by was the old Plaza.
Underneath the hotel on the ground floor were two saloons, a barber shop, and a broom manufactory.

The lodgers themselves were for the most part "transients," sailors lounging about shore between two voyages, Swedes and Danes, farmhands, grape-pickers, and cow-punchers from distant parts of the state, a few lost women, and Japanese cooks and second-boys remaining there while they advertised for positions.
Vandover sank to the grade of these people at once with that fatal adaptability to environment which he had permitted himself to foster throughout his entire life, and which had led him to be contented in almost any circumstances.

It was as if the brute in him were forever seeking a lower level, wallowing itself lower and lower into the filth and into the mire, content to be foul, content to be prone, to be inert and supine.
It was Saturday morning about a quarter of nine.

The wet season had begun early that year.