Two years of California, and then he returned East.  At that period of his life the idea of the Diplomatic Service as a career appealed to him.  Mr. Buchanan was going to England as Minister, and Ward McAllister applied to President Pierce for the post of Secretary of Legation.  He was persona grata with Buchanan, he had the influence necessary to push his petition, and the matter seemed settled.  But just then along came his father, who wanted to be made Circuit Judge of the United States for the State of California.  Two appointments at the same time to one family were out of the question, so the young man stepped aside as became a dutiful son.  But see Europe he would, and if he could not go in the Government’s service and at the public expense as a dabbler with official sealing wax, he would go as a private citizen.  The record he preserved of that journey gives a marvellous picture of the man.

In London he met a Californian, in with all the sporting world, on intimate terms with the champion prize-fighter of England, the Queen’s pages, and the Tattersalls crowd.  Chaperoned by this curious countryman, McAllister’s first introduction to London life took the form of a dinner at a great house in the suburbs.  It was a strange house and a strange company, more in keeping with the eighteenth century than the middle of the nineteenth.  The rat-pit, the drawing of the badger, the bloody battling of the bull terriers, the high betting, the Gargantuan eating and drinking and shouting, the smashing of glasses and plates, the imperturbable footmen in green and gold liveries calmly replacing in their chairs the guests overcome by strong potations—­it was a picture for Hogarth’s pencil at its best, or Gillray’s at its craziest.

The intimation is that, in the course of this and similar adventures, McAllister was defraying his own expenses and those of his Californian companion.  Provided it was the kind of life he wanted to see, it was money well spent.

Then he went off to Windsor, and there, at the village inn, dined with Her Majesty’s chef and the keeper of the jewel-room.  Again it was probably the visitor from across the seas who gave the dinner, as a result of which he was permitted to visit the royal kitchen, and see the roasts turning on the spits.

“I saw Prince Albert and the Prince of Wales that morning shooting pheasants alongside of the Windsor Long Walk, and stood within a few yards of them.  I feel sure we ate, that day, the pheasants that had been shot by Prince Albert.”  Doesn’t it read like a bit of Thackeray—­say from the paper in “The Book of Snobs” on “The Court Circular” with its references to the shooting methods of a certain German Prince-Consort?

    “A tiny bit of orange peel,
      The butt of a cigar,
    Once trod on by a Princely heel,
      How beautiful they are!”