quality of a man made more manifest than by the manner in which he meets misfortune.  One, when the sky darkens, having strong impulse and weak will, rushes into suicide; another, with a large vein of cowardice, seeks to drown the sense of disaster in strong drink; yet another, tortured in every fiber of a sensitive organization, flees from the scene of his troubles and the faces of those that know him, preferring exile to shame.  The truest man, when assailed by sudden calamity, rallies all the reserved forces of a splendid manhood to meet the shock, and, like a good ship, lifting itself from the trough of the swelling sea, mounts the wave and rides on.  It was a curious idiosyncrasy that led this man, when fortune and reason were swept away at a stroke, to fall back upon this imaginary imperialism.  The nature that could thus, when the real fabric of life was wrecked, construct such another by the exercise of a disordered imagination, must have been originally of a gentle and magnanimous type.  The broken fragments of mind, like those of a statue, reveal the quality of the original creation.  It may be that he was happier than many who have worn real crowns.  Napoleon at Chiselhurst, or his greater uncle at St. Helena, might have been gainer by exchanging lots with this man, who had the inward joy of conscious greatness without its burden and its perils.  To all public places he had free access, and no pageant was complete without his presence.  From time to time he issued proclamations, signed “Norton I.,” which the lively San Francisco dailies were always ready to print conspicuously in their columns.  The style of these proclamations was stately, the royal first person plural being used by him with all gravity and dignity.  Ever and anon, as his uniform became dilapidated or ragged, a reminder of the condition of the imperial wardrobe would be given in one or more of the newspapers, and then in a few days he would appear in a new suit.  He had the entree of all the restaurants, and he lodged—­nobody knew where.  It was said that he was cared for by members of the Freemason Society to which he belonged at the time of his fall.  I saw him often in my congregation in the Pine-street church, along in 1858, and into the sixties.  He was a respectful and attentive listener to preaching.  On the occasion of one of his first visits he spoke to me after the service, saying, in a kind and patronizing tone: 

“I think it my duty to encourage religion and morality by showing myself at church, and to avoid jealousy I attend them all in turn.”

He loved children, and would come into the Sunday-school, and sit delighted with their singing.  When, in distributing the presents on a Christmas-tree, a necktie was handed him as the gift of the young ladies, he received it with much satisfaction, making a kingly bow of gracious acknowledgment.  Meeting him one day, in the springtime, holding my little girl by the hand, he paused, looked at the child’s bright face, and taking a rose-bud from his button-hole, he presented it to her with a manner so graceful, and a smile so benignant, as to show that under the dingy blue uniform there beat the heart of a gentleman.  He kept a keen eye on current events, and sometimes expressed his views with great sagacity.  One day he stopped me on the street, saying: