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"heap of money in California, & I have lost a great heap in bad speculations, "since I have been over here. But I have got a scheme on its legs by which I "hope to make again as much as I have lost. That, Sir, is what I am - & I "wish you good night. My name is..." I could not catch the word, but I afterward ascertained it, & found that my first be-room companion added modesty to his other merits, & had not told me how great a man he was in his own State.

It happened the next day that no train started for the North till half past four in the afternoon; & as the rain of the previous night had turned to heavy unclear sleet, I congratulated myself on the accident, although it appeared so disagreeable at the time, to which I was indebted for the acquaintance of the Californian. He had known California, he said, from the first influx of gold-hunters. The rogues & deperadoes of all that part of the world were collected there; but there was some good stuff that came in at the same time. Society wd have been completely turned upsdie down, & no decent man cd have remained in the place, if it had not been for Lynch Law, & the unclear of the pistol. These two things wet everything quite right in five years; in a way in which no other kind of law, supported by all the Churches & all the teachers in the world, could have done it in fifty years. And now the State is as orderly a community as there is on the face of the Earth. After the roughness of many years of Californian life, in the early days of the State, he found the hardships of the late war mere bagatelles. The war seemed to him only like an exciting pastime.