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1 My 26th Birth Day Natoma California. Nov 13th 1849. Strange are vocissitudes of life. The princely manhun of to day is a beggar to morrow - the friend who clasped our hand this week - the next his mouldering in the grave. The scholar who now is ranked high in honour and intellectuality but shortly is found among the debased slaves of intemperance. Every passing year place us in new circumstances - is filled with new localities - or bears - the changes of our hope - our purposes - or prosperty. 'Tis not life alone which is subject to vicissitude - though this is a uncertain tenure as the wind that fans the earth - but every thing. Connected with us - our bodies - our minds - our affections - our relations - and positions. Ever passing moment busy with the structure - our bodies - bringing it to maturity or undermining it with dreary bay with our opinions and our feelings - changing the one until we are almost ready to write uncertain every object - the other alternatily causing the happiest emotions - so the most poignant disappointment is busy with our circumstances - placing us in new localities - and shifting the persons and beings around us - as scenery shifts in a play. We know not what shall befall us - the certainties of to day are the enigmas of to morrow - what was joyful becomes the subject of regret - what we most disnd - becomes that most to be avoided. Man is a king when only possession is the present - only certain future - death - and the unknown hereafter. How then am I surprised - as the years flit by - and each birth day bids me however on its eminence and take my annual survey - to see the changes which take place in my new life - to history - its scenes. Scarcely two together finds me in the same place none are connected with its predecessor by the same feelings and the same prospects - such are the changes - that I sigh - and say when shall I cease and be at rest. This day you are in Albany settled in business pursuits - surrounded by friends - and by all the luxuries and enjoyments of social life - to day I am thousands of miles distant, in the wilds of California. [Unclear] and continents dividing me from my former place - with but few friends around me - and with hardly a semlance of social life visible.