piece of soap, a toothbrush, a comb, and a few towels, I was rigged out.  I brought myself each day the water I needed from a well near by.  I had an old pine table and a cane-bottomed sofa, and with these and the bills which had passed the Legislature, corrected as they became laws, and the statutes of the previous session, I put out my sign as an attorney and counsellor-at-law, and began the practice of my profession.

Soon afterwards I found my name mentioned as a candidate for the State Senate.  The idea of returning to the Legislature as a Senator pleased me.  The people of the county seemed to favor the suggestion.  Accordingly I made a short visit to neighboring precincts, and finding my candidacy generally approved I went to work to make it successful.  At the election of delegates to the county convention, which was to nominate candidates, a majority was returned in my favor.  Several of them being unable to attend the convention, which was to be held at Downieville, a distance of about seventy miles from Marysville, sent me their proxies made out in blank to be filled with the name of any one whom I might designate.  To one supposed friend I gave ten proxies, to another five, and to a third two.  When the members met, just previous to the assembling of the convention, it was generally conceded that I had a majority of the delegates.  But I had a new lesson in manipulation to learn.  Just before the opening of the convention my supposed friend, who had the ten proxies, was approached by the other side, and by promises to give the office of sheriff to his partner—­an office supposed to be worth thirty thousand a year—­his ten votes were secured for my opponent.  The one to whom I had given five proxies was promised for those votes the county judgeship.  So when the convention voted, to my astonishment and that of my friends, fifteen of my proxies were cast for my opponent, Joseph C. McKibbin, afterwards a member of Congress, who acted so fearlessly when the Kansas question came up.  I was accordingly beaten by two votes.

For the moment I was furious, and hunted up the man who had held my ten proxies, and had been seduced from my support.  When I found him in the room of the convention, I seized him and attempted to throw him out of the window.  I succeeded in getting half his body out, when bystanders pulled me back and separated us.  This was fortunate for both of us; for just underneath the window there was a well or shaft sunk fifty feet deep.  The following morning I left Downieville, returned to my office and loft at Marysville, and gave my attention to the practice of the law.  My business soon became very large; and, as my expenses were moderate, within two years and a half I paid off all my indebtedness, amounting with the accumulations of interest to over thirty-eight thousand dollars.  Part of this amount was paid by a surrender of the property mortgaged, or a sale of that previously assigned, but the greater part