Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivereth him out of them all.

The spring flowers were blooming on the grave when I saw it last.

A Day.

Ah, that blessed, blessed day!  I had gone to the White Sulphur Springs, in Napa County, to get relief from the effects of the California poison-oak.  Gay deceiver!  With its tender green and pink leaves, it looks as innocent and smiling as sin when it woos youth and ignorance.  Like sin, it is found everywhere in that beautiful land.  Many antidotes are used, but the only sure way of dealing with it is to keep away from it.  Again, there is an analogy:  it is easier to keep out of sin than to get out when caught.  These soft, pure white sulphur waters work miracles of healing, and attract all sorts of people.  The weary and broken down man of business comes here to sleep, and eat, and rest; the woman of fashion, to dress and flirt; the loudly-dressed and heavily-bejeweled gambler, to ply his trade; happy bridal couples, to have the world to themselves; successful and unsuccessful politicians, to plan future triumphs or brood over defeats; pale and trembling invalids, to seek healing or a brief respite from the grave; families escaping from the wind and fog of the bay, to spend a few weeks where they can find sunshine and quiet—­it is a little world in itself.  The spot is every way beautiful, but its chief charm is its isolation.  Though within a few hours’ ride of San Francisco, and only two miles from a railroad-station, you feel as if you were in the very heart of nature —­and so you are.  Winding along the banks of a sparkling stream, the mountains—­great masses of leafy green—­rise abruptly on either hand; the road bends this way and that until a sudden turn brings you to a little valley hemmed in all around by the giant hills.  A bold, rocky projection just above the main hotel gives a touch of ruggedness and grandeur to the scene.  How delicious the feeling of rest that comes over you at once!—­the world shut out, the hills around, and the sky above.

It was in 1863, when the civil war was at its white heat.  Circumstances had given me undesired notoriety in that connection.  I had been thrust into the very vortex of its passion, and my name made the rallying-cry of opposing elements in California.  The guns of Manassas, Cedar Mountain, and the Chickahominy, were echoed in the foothills of the Sierras, and in the peaceful valleys of the far-away Pacific Coast.  The good sense of a practical, people prevented any flagrant outbreak on a large scale, but here and there a too ardent Southerner said or did something that gave him a few weeks’ or months’ duress at Fort Alcatraz, and the honors of a bloodless martyrdom.  I was then living at North Beach, in full sight of that fortress.  It was kindly suggested by several of my brother editors that it would be a good place for me.  When, as my eye swept over the bay in the early morning, the first sight that met my gaze