At an election in a California town, one of these men sufferers, mistaking me for a voter, took me by a button of my coat, and poured forth a tale of woe so long that, unable to endure it longer, I cut off the button and fled.  He did not notice my departure, and two hours later, there he was holding on to the button, all alone, gesticulating frantically, and beseeching me to vote for him to save his wife and ten children from starvation.  For aught I know, he has not missed me to this day; but is still sounding forth his wild appeals.

Should I describe fully all the wonderful scenes beheld by me in this wonderland, I should exhaust time and trench upon eternity.  Suffice it to state that I returned to ’Frisco, fought a successful dictionary battle there, formed the acquaintance of many distinguished men, among them the great Irving Scott, who built the famous battleship Oregon.  He was president of the city school-board, head of the vast Union Iron Works, and besides performing many herculean labors, was stumping the state nightly in favor of the election of William McKinley to the presidency of the United States.

I was fairly driven from this city by the ferocious fleas, which seemed to render life almost unendurable in hovel and palace.  I could get no rest day or night in many parts of the state, on account of the savage attacks of these unspeakable, insatiate biters, more terrible than an army with Gatling guns.

Crossing the beautiful bay in the floating palace ferry-boat, I was for a time enchanted with Highland Park, Oakland.  In front, through a vista of Eucalyptus, oak and elm trees, appear the glistening waters of the famed inland sea; on the right are seen the domes and spires of Oakland, Alameda, and San Francisco; across the valley loom the mountains, in the rainy season green to their summits, on which rest the serene blue of the heavens, except when, the frequent fogs bury everything from sight.  On one side of the house, at the same time, the trade winds from the Pacific chill you to your very bones, on the other side the burning heat is unbearable.  Afar off the humble home of Joaquin Miller, poet of the Sierras, clearly appears.

There are many beautiful homes on this lofty hilltop, but they were all for sale at bargains, for their occupants have grown weary of the cloud bursts of the long dreary rainy season, then of the parching heats of the equally dreary dry season, when a pickaxe and crowbar are required to dig a potato unless you keep water running from the hose day and night.  These people long to return to their old homes in New England where the varying seasons are not so monotonous.

I was invited to accompany a religious society on a week’s camp in a romantic canyon; but I was glad I did not when they returned in a couple of days, narrating an adventure which daunted the stoutest hearts.  On the second night of their camping, the men were aroused from sleep by the frightful screams from the women’s tent; rushing out, they saw in the light of the great fire kept burning to frighten the wild-cats and mountain lions, a circle of venomous rattle-snakes, hissing like fiends and coiled for springing.  The men fought desperately all night with shotguns and clubs.  Life is scarcely worth the living with these demons, and their natural attendants, the horrible tarantulas.