he had the gold dust about him to that amount.  He said yes.  I said let me have it and I will take up my note.  He said there was no place to weigh it.  I said yes, here there was a place where I was acquainted.  It was weighed and handed to me.  I told him I would see him at dinner, which I did.  I then opened on him, and told him how despicably he had acted when I so generously trusted to his honor.  He made no reply; he virtually admitted the truth of my statement.  I never saw him afterward.  That was the only time I ever played the confidence game in my life, and my conscience has approved of it ever since.

My friend, Mr. R., had got his brewery well under way in Happy Valley, as they called that part of the city, had used up his $8,000 and commenced borrowing money on my indorsement, at ten per cent a month, the regular interest at that time.  He had a friend, Lieutenant S., who resigned from the regular army, a graduate from West Point, who had been up in the country, and came back with a flaming account of a place on the Toulama river, which empties into the San Joaquin, which was the head of navigation on that river, and was the place to start a town, and if we would furnish him with $1,500 to do it with, we would each own a third of it.  I did not take to it, but Mr. R. was so earnest about it, and had such confidence in his friend, that I finally let him have the money.  There was quite a spirit of speculation of that kind at that time.  Colonel Stevenson had laid out one on Suisan bay, at the mouth of the San Joaquin river, named New York of the Pacific.  Marysville, on the Sacramento river, was laid out a short time previous, and proved a great success, making the fortunes of the projectors.  Of course, a few were successful, and many failed.  It seemed to have been a legitimate thing to do to make a fortune in a new country.  I became acquainted with Broderick.  It was Koyler & Broderick.  They had an office in the same building with Colonel Stevenson.  Broderick, who was afterward United States Senator from California, and I became very intimate.  He was not intellectually a very brilliant man, but a solid, able and strictly honest man, and a thoroughly posted politician of his day.  He had run as a Democratic candidate for Congress from the city of New York, but was not elected.  In California he was first elected to the State Senate from the city.  It was he who conceived the project of laying out the water lots on the bay, and got the bill through the Legislature.  He advised me to buy one or more.  I looked at where he suggested to me to buy, and found them six feet under water.  Although they could be bought very cheap then, their prospective value seemed so remote to me I thought they were not worth the trouble of bothering with.  It shows how easy it is to be mistaken in apprehending the future.  I understand they are now the most valuable part of the city.

THE MAN IN HIS TENT.