During the campaign in which Gen. George B. McClellan ran for the Presidency against Abraham Lincoln, the Democrats of Northern California had a great celebration which lasted two or three days.  Among other things was a barbecue at the race track, two or three miles out of town.  Great pits were dug which were filled with oak stumps and logs, and burned for about twenty-four hours before the cooking began.  These logs were reduced to a perfect bed of live coals.  Over these, old-fashioned Southern negroes, of whom there were many in the neighborhood, cooked quarters of beef, whole sheep, pigs, chickens, ducks, turkeys and geese.  There were at least five thousand people on the ground.  My blacksmith friend, Allison, was firing a salute with an old cannon.  He fired the cannon after it was loaded, with an iron rod, one end of which was kept heated in a small fire.  I attended to the fire for him.  After the discharge the gun was wiped out with a wet swab.  The powder was done up in red flannel cartridges.  Allison, with heavy, buckskin gloves on his hands, would hold his thumb over the vent or tube of the cannon.  Two men, first slitting the lower end of the cartridge, would ram it into the gun.  During each loading process I straddled the gun, looking towards Allison.  After a number of discharges, the heat burned a hole through the glove that Allison was using, and his thumb, coming in contact with the hot metal, was withdrawn for an instant, while the assistants were sending home a charge.  There was an immediate premature explosion.  I was sitting astride the gun, and felt it rise up and buck like a horse.  Allison’s eyes were nearly ruined, and his face filled with powder, the marks of which stayed with him the rest of his life.  The two assistants were horribly mutilated, but neither of them was killed.  For a time I thought I never would hear again.  My ears simply shut up and refused to open for some time.

It would seem that this disaster should have been sufficient for one day, but it was not.  That night there was to have been public speaking in front of the Western Hotel, by many prominent politicians.  Opposite the hotel was a two-story brick building, with a veranda built around it.  All of the offices on the second floor opened on this veranda.  It was crowded with people.  The weight became excessive.  The iron posts next to the sidewalk, which sustained the veranda, slid out, and the platform swung down like a table leaf, spilling everybody onto the sidewalk.  Eight or nine people were killed outright, and many more very severely injured.

When about twelve years of age I got hold of two greyhounds, sisters, named “Flora” and “Queen.”  During the winter time I spent much time chasing jackrabbits.  In summer time the ground got so hard that the dogs would not run.  The ground hurt their feet.  But in the winter we had great sport.  There was an immense open plain east of our property, miles long and miles wide, and level as a floor.  There