sold fruit and probably some liquor, etc., to make a living.  No one disturbed him for one year.  He applied to the alcalde and paid his $16 and got a good, valid title.  After the gold was discovered it became the most valuable property in the city.  When I was doing business with him he had a three-story brick store, which he owned.  The whaling ship had been gone to the Arctic ocean two or three years and had heard nothing of the discovery of the gold, and wonderful changes in San Francisco, and the captain thought he would put in that port on his return and hunt up his runaway sailor, and behold, his absconding sailor was rich enough when he found him to buy his ship and his whole cargo of whale oil.  I was introduced by him to his captain and shook hands with him, and we had a good talk over it.  Wherein does our stories of fiction, of our boyhood, of Arabian Nights, surpass the actual events of life, of the wonderful fluctuations of fortunes in California in the days of the Forty-niners?

[Illustration:  THE CAPTAIN AND THE RUNAWAY SAILOR.]

On the death of President Taylor, a meeting was called for the purpose of having funeral obsequies there in his honor.  A man was named for president of the day.  Then it was proposed to name a vice-president for each State and Territory, which was done.  There were persons in the crowd from every one of them.  A day was set apart for the ceremonies, and all business was to be suspended.  There was a long procession on that day, and the masons and all societies and the people in general turned out in full force, including the Chinese, who were smart enough to think it would make a favorable impression in their favor.  After the parade was dismissed in the plaza, the Chinese were requested to remain, and a missionary addressed them, and a Chinaman interpreted to them in their own language.  I noticed that their language was much more condensed than ours.  It took about a third of the time for him to translate what the missionary said.  When the missionary closed, he said he hoped that we would all meet together in another and a better world.  It seemed to them so absurd that they looked at each other and smiled as if it was a good joke.  In those early days there were no particular prejudices against them.  Pagans, as we call them, practised the Christian virtues toward their own countrymen.  When the ship arrived from China they were down to greet the newcomers, whom they had never seen before, and invite them to their homes.  The present laws of restriction against them, I think, are all right.  We cannot afford to run the risk of having the institutions of our country injured by an emigration that is uncongenial to it.  We have gone too far in that line already, not from selfishness, but to perpetuate the institutions founded by our revolutionary ancestors, in their purity, for the interests of mankind.