My first acquaintance with Dr. Gwin began with, an incident that illustrates the man and the times.  It was in 1856.  The Legislature was in session at Sacramento, and a United States Senator was to, be elected.  I was making a tentative movement toward starting a Southern Methodist newspaper, and visited Sacramento on that business.  My friend Major P. L. Solomon was there, and took a friendly interest in my enterprise.  He proposed to introduce me to the leading men of both parties, and I thankfully availed myself of his courtesy.  Among the first to whom he presented me was a noted politician who, both before and since, has enjoyed a national notoriety, and who still lives, and is as, ready as ever to talk or fight.  His name I need not give.  I presented to him my mission, and he seemed embarrassed.

“I am with you, of course.  My mother was a Methodist, and all my sympathies are with the Methodist Church.  I am a Southern man in all my convictions and impulses, and I am a Southern Methodist in principle.  But you see, sir, I am a candidate for United States Senator, and sectional feeling is likely to enter into the contest, and if it were known that my name was on your list of subscribers, it might endanger my election.”

He squeezed my arm, told me he loved me and my Church, said he would be happy to see me often, and so forth—­but he did not give me his name.  I left him, saying in my heart, Here is a politician.

Going on together, in the corridor we met Gwin.  Solomon introduced me, and told him my business.

“I am glad to know that you are going to start a Southern Methodist newspaper.  No Church can do without its organ.  Put me down on your list, and come with me, and I will make all these fellows subscribe.  There is not much religion among them, I fear, but we will make them take the paper.”

This was said in a hearty and pleasant way, and he took me from man to man, until I had gotten more than a dozen names, among them two or three of his most active political opponents.

This incident exhibits the two types of the politician, and the two classes of men to be found in all communities—­the one all “blarney” and selfishness, the other with real manhood redeeming poor human nature, and saving it from utter contempt.  The senatorial prize eluded the grasp of both aspirants, but the reader will not be at a loss to guess whose side I was on.  Dr. Gwin made a friend that day, and never lost him.  It was this sort of fidelity to friends that, when fortune frowned on the grand old Senator after the collapse at Appomattox, rallied thousands of true hearts to his side, among whom were those who had fought him in many a fierce political battle.  Broderick and Gwin were both, by a curious turn of political fortune, elected by the same Legislature to the United States Senate.  Broderick sleeps in Lone Mountain, and Gwin still treads the stage of his former glory, a living monument of the days when California politics was half romance and half tragedy.  The friend and protege of General Andrew Jackson, a member of the first Constitutional Convention of California, twice United States Senator, a prominent figure in the civil war, the father of the great Pacific Railway, he is the front figure on the canvas of California history.