Cartoonist Edward Jump's famous picture, from the San Franciscan magazine "Wasp". shows Norton I as the pope, performing the funeral service for Lazarus. The crowd is composed of well-known San Franciscans of the era. Bummer and Lazarus were mongrel dogs - the supposed pets of Norton I.

Famed San Francisco writer Samuel Dickson offered this version of the Bummer and Lazarus story, in San Francisco is My Home, where Dickson wrote:
Bummer and Lazarus went everywhere with him. No theatrical performance opened in San Francisco from 1855 to 1880 that three complimentary tickets for the first row of the balcony were not put aside for Bummer and Lazarus and Norton I, Emperor of the United States. It was a custom that held until that tragic day when his beloved mongrel, Lazarus, died, and thousands of San Franciscans followed it to its grave where it was buried as a ward of the city.