One of my uncles made for us a four-wheeled wagon, the hub, spokes and axles being made out of California oak—­such a wagon as you can buy in any store today, only a little larger.  We made a kite of large dimensions, and covered the frame with cotton from a couple of flour sacks.  At certain times of the year, the wind across the Marysville plains blew with great velocity.  This kite, in a strong wind, had great pulling capacity.  We would go out into the plain, put up the kite, and fasten the string to the tongue of the wagon, three or four of us pile on, and let her go.  The speed that we would travel before the wind by this means was marvelous, but we tried the kite trick once too often.  We got to going so fast we could not slow down nor successfully guide the wagon.  It ran over an old stump, spilled us all out, and kite and wagon sailed away clear across Feather River into Sutter County and we never saw either of them again.

The boys of the present age have no such opportunities for out-of-door sports as we did in the olden days.  Now it is baseball, automobile exhibitions and moving picture shows.  Increased population, high-power guns, cultivation of the soil, the breaking up of large ranches into smaller holdings, have resulted in the disappearance of much of the game with which the land then abounded.

Fifty years ago in California, conditions of rural life were necessarily hard.  Our habitations were but little more than shelter from the elements.  We had none of the conveniences of modern life.  At our house we always made our own tallow candles.  We hardened the candles by mixing beeswax with the tallow.  We made the beeswax from comb of the honey taken from bee trees.  We corned our own beef and made sauerkraut by the barrel for winter use.  We canned our own fruit, made jelly and jam from wild berries and wild grapes.  We selected perfect ears of corn, shelled it at home, ran it through a fanning machine, and then had the corn ground into meal for our own consumption.  We raised our own poultry and made our own butter and cheese, with plenty to sell; put up our own lard, shoulders, ham and bacon and made our own hominy.  The larder was always well filled.  The mother of a family was its doctor.  A huge dose of blue mass, followed by castor oil and quinine, was supposed to cure everything, and it generally did.  In the cities luxuries were few.  To own a piano was the privilege of the very wealthy.

Speaking of pianos, in the flood of 1863, before Marysville was protected by its levee, which is now twenty-five feet high, the family cow swam into the parlor of one of the best mansions of the town, through the window.  When the flood waters had subsided, she was found drowned on top of the piano.

Life under the conditions here given was necessarily hard.  Our amusements were few.  We, who lived in the country, had plenty of good air and sound sleep-two things often denied the city resident.  Our sports were few and simple, but of such a nature that they toughened the fiber and strengthened the muscles of our bodies, thus fitting us to withstand the heavy drafts on our vitality that the hurly-burly of modern life entails upon the race.